GENRE ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES RESEARCH ARTICLE ABSTRACTS DECIPHERING THE POSSIBLE GENERICSPECIFICITY

Research article abstracts, as an academic genre, play a central role in academic discourse communities. Reviewing the abstracts determines the fate of a research article, to be or not to be accepted and embraced. The first impression that abstracts leave on the reviewers makes this genre more delicate. Bearing this in mind, the current paper aimed to explore the generic structure of research article abstracts in one of the major sub-disciplines of applied linguistics, that is English for Specific Purposes (ESP), which is highly concerned with the genre analysis and its implications in gearing the courses to the needs of specific discourse communities. To this end, ۴۰ research article abstracts were drawn from the relevant refereed journals and were analyzed in light of Hyland’s five-move (Introduction, Purpose, Method, Product, Conclusion). The results revealed that the most frequent moves in ESP RA abstracts were Method, Purpose, Product, respectively. The other two moves, Introduction and Conclusion, seemed to be perceived as less obligatory or necessary. It was also found that ten abstracts followed the given move pattern while the rest of the articles had various pattern. This might imply that Hyland’s (۲۰۰۲) model failed to account appropriately for the ESP RA abstracts. The findings enrich the existing literature and carry pedagogical implications for research article writers and academic writing instructors.