Rhetoric Structure of the Coalesced Results and Discussion Section: A Corpus-based Comparative Study via NVivo 2.0

摘要

My corpus-based move analysis of the combined Results and Discussion section of research articles was conducted with the aid of NVivo 2.0 in an annotation scheme of discourse tags -moves and steps. Three dominant moves -Contextualizing the Study, Reporting Results, and Commenting on the Results and their combination in core cyclic patterns were located in both corpora of Chinese and NSE (i.e., Native speakers of English) scientists, in which high-frequency discursive strategies of experimental procedures and their justifications ( ca.10 steps per R&D) contribute to reflect the disciplinary nature of materials science. Salient cross-cultural differences have been found related to the distinct conventions of two disciplinary communities, 1) Chinese scientist writers (in the local context of CNE, i. e, Chinese speakers of English), as compared with their NSE colleagues,seem to be more neutral and less willing to offer suggestions for further studies in response to existing competitions from other community members; and 2)comparing the composition and elaborateness of the key move of Commenting on the Results, Chinese scientists are found inclined to utilize fewer types and less elaborateness per move, which may result from such factors as language proficiency, in-house policy of local CNE journals, and reader-responsible thought pattern.