RA Abstracts

Most studies within the area of genre analysis, particularly those conducted in Iran, have exclusively used text analysis. While such investigations have led to important understandings of generic features of texts, it can be argued that incorporating interview data for triangulation can lead to better understanding of generic features of texts. Along this line, this paper reports the results of a qualitative study of Persian RA abstracts written by native speakers of Persian. Taking a macro and a micro structure framework, this article will look into the ‘moves’ and ‘author identity’ in such RA abstracts. Two patterns are often associated with English academic prose: Introduction-Methods-Results-Discussion and CARS (Create-a-research-space) (Lores, 2004). This, however, did not seem to be the case in most RA abstracts under study. The other feature of Persian RA abstracts to be explored is the absence of first person pronoun. One preliminary hypothesis would be to attribute this to a carry-over of positivistic traditions (Hyland, 2001), though qualitative interviews pointed to a close link between lack of reference to self and modesty as a cultural norm among the participants under study.

The significance of research article (RA) abstract as a key academic genre has recently motivated analysts to focus on this neglected area. Considering a summary function for abstracts, most genre researchers have adopted the conventionally proposed Introduction- Method- Results- Discussion (or Conclusion) (IMRD) model for analysis. However, the problems reported, especially for Results and Discussion sections, question the vitality of such accounts and prompt further scrutiny. Moreover, in spite of claims about disciplinary and cultural variations which can affect communication within and across discourse communities, sufficient contrastive studies which address the Iranian academics' need to communicate with and participate efficiently in the international discourse communities are scarce. Inspired by English for Specific/Academic Purposes tradition of genre analysis, this paper tries to fill these gaps presenting a comparative generic analysis of soft sciences abstracts to see what the characterizing features of the texts of Iranian scholars and their international peers are. The macro-structure, micro-structure, and some features of 100 experimental RA abstracts taken from a number of reputable Iranian (Persian) and international (English) journals were analyzed and explained drawing upon some existing rigorous models. The results revealed similarities in the presence of Introduction, Method, and concluding units, while there were also differences in the realization of units, Moves, and Steps. It is argued that the differences can point to the varying cultural norms and values of the two groups. Plus, considering the inadequacy of the four-way macro-model, an alternative three-way model was suggested, instead. Some implications of the study are discussed, too