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A Genre Analysis of the Method Section of English Journal Papers in Applied Linguistics

Author: JiXiuMing
Tutor: HuZhiQing
School: Huazhong University of Science and Technology
Course: Subject Teaching
Keywords: journal paper Method section generic structure linguistic features
CLC: H315
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2011
Downloads: 26
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Abstract

Over the past two decades, genre and genre analysis has been a hot-debated topic in the research area of English for Specific Purposes and English for Academic Purposes. Previous researches have focused on generic structures of sections of Abstract, Introduction, Results and Conclusion. The Method section, however, has been given little attention. The Method section recounts a detailed description of the way the ongoing study employed to collect data and analyze data. A sound Method section guarantees the validity of research findings to be reported in the Results section. This thesis intends to explore generic structure of Method sections of linguistics journal papers in terms of move and step, and to find out linguistic means which realize communicative functions of each move and step.Independent Method sections of 100 journal papers are collected from Journal of English for Academic Purpose and English for Specific Purpose from the year 2002 to 2010. Two sub-corpora which consist of 50 participant-based Method sections with 46629 words and 50 corpus-based Method sections with 40396 words are constructed respectively. Following the analysis steps proposed by Kanoksilapatham (2007), the generic structure of participant-based Method sections and corpus-based Method sections of linguistics journal papers are analyzed.The generic schemes of participant-based Method sections and corpus-based Method sections have distinct features. In the model of participant-based Method sections, four major moves are identified: Move 1: introducing preliminary information; Move 2 : describing the sample; Move 3: describing data collection procedures; and Move 4: recounting data analysis procedures, among which Move 2 and Move 3 (in 100% of all Method sections of journal papers) are obligatory moves. And Move 4 appears in 72% of all Method sections and Move 1 is in 44% of all Method sections. There are also four moves are identified in the model of corpus-based Method sections: Move1: introducing preliminary information; Move 2: describing data collection procedures; Move 3: describing the framework of data analysis; and Move 4: describing data analysis procedures, among which Move 4 is the obligatory move appearing in all of the Method sections. And the appearance frequencies of Move2, Move 3 and Move 1 are 96%, 76% and 30% respectively.As to linguistic features of Method sections, the most two distinct linguistic features which appear in both Method sections of two disciplines are past simple tense and passive voice. More specifically, while describing the sample, the prepositions denoting locations are used to specify the source of the sample, compositional verbs are applied to indicate the relationship between a category of the sample and subcategories, and temporal adverbial clauses are used to describe characteristics of the sample. While recounting data collection and data analysis procedures, passive procedural verbs expressed in simple past tense are used to elucidate a series of involved activities, and time-relationship words and phrases are employed to show temporal sequence of the whole collection and analysis process. While justifying the data collection and data analysis procedures, reason adjuncts, purposive phrases, and words with positive connotations are used to provide the rational of the collection and analysis method.This paper firstly describes generic structure and investigates the linguistic features of each move type and step type of participant-based Method sections of linguistics journal papers, then describes generic structure and linguistic features of corpus-based Method sections. It sets a good example and provides two models for genre analysis of two kinds of Method sections. This study can help writers of journal papers and teachers understand the structure and characteristics of Method section and it can also shed light on the teaching and writing of this section.

A Genre Analysis of the Method Section of English Journal Papers in Applied Linguistics

Abstract

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