A Comparative Study Of Moves In English Abstracts Of Doctoral Dissertations Of Chinese And American Universities

are highly abbreviated and summarized representations of their associated documents that provide the readers a means to access the central elements of the document rapidly and with ease,and effective dissemination of information in academic communities is to some extent dependent on abstracts which work as time-saving devices and useful tools in indexing and archival of articles.To facilitate effective international academic communication,authors of various types of research articles are often required to either write their abstract in English or attach an English abstract.However,many novice Chinese academics who are not native speakers of English would find such a task challenging,which should not come as a surprise considering the fact that effective teaching of academic writing in English as a Foreign Language(EFL)settings remains a difficult task.The current study,therefore,seeks to help Chinese academics in getting better at writing abstracts through a comparative study of abstracts written by Chinese and American authors across two different disciplines.The study is intended to highlight the differences between works of native and non-native/expert authors under different disciplinary contexts,thus providing the Chinese authors with some level of guidance in emulating the writing of native speakers/expert users.In the current study,doctoral dissertation abstracts of Chinese and American authors which are in the disciplines of computer science and linguistics were collected in a corpus for analysis.The total corpus comprised 120 abstracts,with 30 in each of the four groups divided along nationality and discipline lines.Following genre analysis traditions of the English for Specific Purposes(ESP)school,a move analysis was performed on the corpus,and the rhetorical move structures of the abstracts identified.The move framework used in the current study was Hyland’s five-move pattern,which includes the moves of introduction,purpose,method,product,and conclusion.Afterwards,the specific linguistic realizations or in other words the linguistic features of moves were also analyzed.Comparisons were then made between the groups.The major findings are as follows: of the five moves,the conclusion move appears to be optional in all cases.Linguistics writer generally include the introduction move less,and computer science writers tend to skip the method move.American writers,or expert users in this study,tend to arrange the moves in a logical,linear pattern more.Some recurring patterns not conforming to the paradigmatic five move pattern are identified.With the exception of the use of simple past in the introduction move,most of the linguistic features of abstracts appear to be similar across the groups.Active voice is preferred in all moves except the method move.A significant difference observed is that computer science abstracts appear to prefer the usage of first person pronouns.Further discussions about the findings are also made.