A Comparison of Thematic Choices and Thematic Progression Patterns in the Research Articles of Well-established and Emerging Disciplines

Several studies have employed the theme-rheme construct to examine the generic profile of research articles (RAs). However, they have mostly focused on the subject matter and nature of disciplines, and other disciplinary characteristics as contextual factors which can impact the genre realization have not been considered in the discourse analysis research. This work, therefore, investigates thematic choices and thematic progression patterns in the RA in relation to the status of disciplines as well-established or emerging fields. To this end, a corpus of 240 RAs of mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering, horticulture, and environmental science were analyzed using Halliday’s (1994) framework of thematicity and McCabe’s (1999) model of thematic progression (TP). The results showed significant differences in the distributions of unmarked and marked themes as well as the patterns of thematic progression between the well-established and emerging disciplines. Based on the findings of this study, we suggest further consideration of the status of disciplines in discourse studies which can serve disciplinary research and contribute to the body of research on science.