Corpus-based Comparative Study of Moves in the Abstracts of Research Papers

As a major approach to genre study, move is of vital importance for analyzing abstracts of research papers. The present paper conducts a corpus-based comparative study of moves in the English abstracts of Chinese and English scientific research papers. The study adopts the four-move model established by John Swales as its framework. Two corpora are built, with one containing 36 English abstracts from Journal of Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and another 36 from AIAA Journal. The study starts first from the move models of English abstracts of both corpora and then presents a detailed analysis of linguistic features of each move. Significant differences are found in both macrostructure and linguistic features between the two corpora. Further analysis shows that linguistic and cultural differences could have exerted great impact on the use of moves and their overall organization. It is suggested that, if papers in Chinese journals intend to be cited and indexed internationally, abstract writing and/or translating from Chinese into English need substantial improvement.