Promoting research: Academic hypes embedded in the rhetorical move structure of sociology research article abstracts

Under the fierce competition for getting research achievements published internationally in recent decades, the abstract serves not only as a summary of the accompanying article but also markets research. This study investigates how writers promote their research in abstracts. Based on a corpus of 210 abstracts in sociology, from a diachronic perspective, we examined how the rhetorical move structure of abstracts and academic hypes embedded therein promote or embellish aspects of research. The results revealed an increasingly complex rhetorical move structure of abstracts which encompasses a growing number of promotional steps that claim the centrality of the topic, identify the research gap and state the implications or significance of the research. Academic hypes showed a dramatic rise and were dominantly embedded in the rhetorical move of research background, method and conclusion. Implications for EAP/ESP writing and pedagogy are discussed.