VARIATIONS IN RHETORICAL MOVES AND METADISCOURSE ELEMENTS IN CONFERENCE ABSTRACTS: A GENRE ANALYSIS

Abstract

An abstract represents the summary of a piece of writing. Genre and metadiscourse analytical studies could highlight move variations in abstracts. The study aimed to investigate variations in the academic conference abstracts of the hard and soft sciences with a focus on rhetorical structure/sequence and the use of hedges/boosters. A corpus of sixty (60) abstracts was used for the study; this comprised 30 abstracts each from the soft sciences and the hard sciences. The abstracts were selected from two conference proceedings. The framework of rhetorical moves for abstracts comprising introduction (I), purpose (P), method (M), product (Pr), and the conclusion was used for the analysis of the rhetorical sequence of the abstracts. The abstracts were further analysed for their use of boosters and hedges. From the results, 43.3% of hard sciences abstracts (HSA) and 33.3% of soft science abstracts (SSA) followed the framework used. Furthermore, purpose, method, product, and conclusion were obligatory moves whereas the introduction move was optional in the SSA. On the other hand, only method and product moves were obligatory with the rest being conventional in SSA. The most dominant move sequence for HSA was I-P-M-Pr-C (46.7%) followed by I-M-Pr-C (17%) and I-P-M-Pr (17%) whereas P-M-Pr-C (43.3%) was the most dominant sequence followed by I-P-M-Pr-C (33.3%) for the SSA. The hard sciences abstracts and the soft sciences abstracts do not show marked differences in the authors’ use of boosters and hedges. Pedagogical implications of the findings of this study are useful particularly for academic conference applicants, academic writing instruction as well as advancing genre and metadiscourse research in conference abstracts.  Article visualizations: