Research on Tense Use and Move Analysis in Journal Article Abstracts

Abstract

There has long been a growing interest in journal article (JA) abstract writing, and this pervading interest has boosted the exigency for further research. This current study therefore aims to investigate both the various applications of verb tense and the rhetorical structure within JA abstracts. A corpus of 1,000 JAs was collected from four prestigious journals related to applied linguistics at the SSCI level. Quantitative analysis indicates the tendency of tense use for the commonly applied reporting verbs. For example, the ANOVA test shows that the frequency of present tense use is significantly higher (p< .05) in the Journal of Pragmatics abstracts. On the other hand, qualitative analysis shows the prevailing adoption of the three-, four-, and five-move theories of the CARS model, the IMRD structure, and the IPMPrC structure, respectively. The results suggest a distinct occurrence of the IMRD structure over other models. These findings present a more systematic pattern within JA abstracts and also show the potential for enlightening further pedagogy-oriented writing instruction for JA abstracts.

一直以來，人們對於期刊論文摘要的寫作興趣與時並進、與日俱增；而這普遍存在的興趣，也加速提升了寫作上進一步的研究。因此，本論文的研究目的，旨在探討動詞時態的各種應用和期刊論文摘要的修辭結構。本語料庫搜集了1000篇期刊論文摘要，這些論文是從四種頗負盛名的應用語言學相關期刊搜集而來，它們都屬於SSCI等級的期刊。本研究的量化分析顯示，時態的使用傾向於常用的報告動詞。例如，在語用學期刊論文的摘要當中，變異數分析顯示，現在式時態的使用頻率具顯著升高（p<.05）。再者，質性分析則顯示了，三步、四步和五步移動理論、CARS模式、IMRD結構以及IPMPrC結構理論，分別受到了廣泛的採用。研究結果也鮮明地指出，在摘要的寫作上，IMRD結構的使用比其他模型更受歡迎。這些發現對於期刊摘要，提出具有系統化的寫作模式，並且也進一步啟發了摘要寫作上饒富教學導向的潛力。