A corpus-based genre analysis study of structural move, citation, reporting verbs and first-person pronouns practices in master dissertation introductory section of language sciences students at university of Constantine 1

Abstract EN

Genre analysis offers a space to analyze generic features such as rhetorical moves, reporting verbs, first person pronouns, and citation that facilitate the writing of academic genres and help to realize writers' communicative purposes.

this study concerned itself with the investigation of the rhetorical organization of master dissertation introductory sections using the move analysis method to genre analysis named creating-a research-space (CARS) Modelproposed by Swales (2004).

in addition, it explored how and for what purposes the aforementioned features were used.

both quantitative and qualitative methods were employed for the two levels of examining the data.

data analysis was based on a corpus of 17 introduction sections randomly selected from 80 master dissertations in the field of language sciences.

having analyzed the data, move-step analysis revealed irregularity and randomness in the execution of the first two moves, and limitation in the set of steps used for expressing some functions in the last move than those proposed in CARS model.

regarding the second analysis, the study indicated a very limited understanding of the range of functions offered by linguistic features and the roles they play to strengthen academic texts.

we suggest these findings to add to the ever-evolving knowledge of how writing academic texts can be understood as having predictable and expected structures as well as functional significance for how they are interpreted.