About the work
Previous research has shown that researchers who use English as an additional language perceive writing research articles (RAs) for publication in English (as L2) as more difficult than writing RAs for publication in their L1. The Discussion section has also been identified as the most difficult section to write, especially for publication in English-medium international journals. A large sample of Spanish researchers have also suggested that being more aware of the differences and similarities in the rhetorical structure of RAs across international English-medium journals and national journals might help them to write this genre in English more confidently. Thus, the aim of the present study has been to compare the rhetorical structure of the Discussion sections of RAs across English and Spanish to gain insights into cross-cultural variation as a function of the target audience. To this aim, I have analyzed the rhetorical structure of a pilot sample of 15 pairs of RAs from the EXEMPRAES (Exemplary Empirical Research Articles in English and Spanish) corpora representing a wide range of disciplinary areas. Drawing on the methodological principles used in the qualitative analysis literature, I have refined existing models of the rhetorical structure of RA Discussion sections, yielding a model, or coding scheme, that contains clearer definitions of moves and steps than those often found in the literature. Using the revised model, I have trained a coder to replicate my analysis independently. My paper discusses the usefulness of performing inter-coder reliability tests to be able to offer the average Cohen’s Kappa coefficient and agreement percentage in the process of revising the coding scheme itself. Finally, it offers PRELIMINARY results about similarities and differences across RA Discussion sections published in international and national contexts in a way that may be useful to multilingual researchers, especially those who publish in English and in Spanish-medium scientific journals.
Print work information
Work information
Title The effect of audience (international English/national Spanish) on the rhetorical structure of research article Discussion sections
Previous research has shown that researchers who use English as an additional language perceive writing research articles (RAs) for publication in English (as L2) as more difficult than writing RAs for publication in their L1. The Discussion section has also been identified as the most difficult section to write, especially for publication in English-medium international journals. A large sample of Spanish researchers have also suggested that being more aware of the differences and similarities in the rhetorical structure of RAs across international English-medium journals and national journals might help them to write this genre in English more confidently. Thus, the aim of the present study has been to compare the rhetorical structure of the Discussion sections of RAs across English and Spanish to gain insights into cross-cultural variation as a function of the target audience. To this aim, I have analyzed the rhetorical structure of a pilot sample of 15 pairs of RAs from the EXEMPRAES (Exemplary Empirical Research Articles in English and Spanish) corpora representing a wide range of disciplinary areas. Drawing on the methodological principles used in the qualitative analysis literature, I have refined existing models of the rhetorical structure of RA Discussion sections, yielding a model, or coding scheme, that contains clearer definitions of moves and steps than those often found in the literature. Using the revised model, I have trained a coder to replicate my analysis independently. My paper discusses the usefulness of performing inter-coder reliability tests to be able to offer the average Cohen’s Kappa coefficient and agreement percentage in the process of revising the coding scheme itself. Finally, it offers PRELIMINARY results about similarities and differences across RA Discussion sections published in international and national contexts in a way that may be useful to multilingual researchers, especially those who publish in English and in Spanish-medium scientific journals.
Work type Article
Tags revistas científicas, castellano, inglés, english, artículo científico, research article, apartados de la discusión y conclusiones, discussion and conclusion sections, spanish, move analysis, retórica contrastiva, scientific journals
-------------------------
Registry info in Safe Creative
Identifier 1512115998817
Entry date Dec 11, 2015, 5:24 PM UTC
License All rights reserved
-------------------------
Copyright registered declarations
Author. Holder Ana I. Moreno. Date Dec 11, 2015.
Information available at https://www.safecreative.org/work/1512115998817-the-effect-of-audience-international-english-national-spanish-on-the-rhetorical-structure-of-research-article-discussion-sections
/
Registration: 1512115998817
