Doctoral Dissertation Research: Uniting genre analysis and multidimensional analysis: A corpus based analysis of scientific research articles

Georgetown University, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

Under the direction of Dr. Jeff Connor-Linton, Ms. Budsaba Kanoksilapatham will compile and analyze a corpus of 60 biochemistry research articles. These articles will be randomly selected from five core journals in biochemistry published in the United States. Previous studies of discourse structure and language use in scientific articles have emphasized the communicative functions of rhetorical moves (like 'Summarizing previous research,' and 'Identifying a research niche') and of a few lexical and grammatical features (like past tense and passive voice). Ms. Kanoksilapatham will address both levels of analysis to determine how they are connected. She will analyze rhetorical moves to determine the rhetorical organization conventionally used in each of the four sections of biochemistry research articles (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion) and to assess the reliability of move identification. She will then analyze the use of dozens of lexical and grammatical features to identify the sets of features that are most typically used to construct each type of move. The importance of this research is threefold. Empirically, the study will offer the most representative review of the rhetorical structure of research articles to date. Theoretically, it is the first study to assess the validity of subjective interpretive constructs like rhetorical moves by analyzing the use of concrete linguistic features within and across those moves and revealing the connection between two ways that meaning is communicated in written texts. Pedagogically, this study may guide language teachers and materials designers in selecting texts and developing learning activities for English as a second or foreign language instruction. Insights from these analyses will help scientists who speak English as a second language to better understand and contribute to reports of scientific discoveries around the world.