Rhetorical Moves and Steps of Structuring Methodology in the English Language-Based Research Articles

This article analyzes the moves and steps which show the descriptions of investigative activities in the research article Methodology section. Forty Methodologies have been chosen from the high impact-factor journals: Journal of English for Academic Purposes, English for Specific Purposes, Discourse Studies and Written Communication. Based on the communicative and semantic functions of text segments which structure the rhetoric of the Methodology section, this investigation has revealed three moves and a plethora of steps, including the new ones, not identified in the previous literature. The qualitative analysis enabled the author to thoroughly describe their functions. The quantitative method was used to define the frequency of the steps and delineate the more and less conventional ones. In sum, all the steps were identified in all the methodologies analyzed but they showed different frequency occurrences. Move 1 comprises nine steps. The step 'referencing previous works' is the most frequent. Move 2 turned out to be obligatory; it includes ten steps with a large discrepancy between the frequency occurrences of the two steps and the other eight ones. Move 3 is actualized through six steps, which also show divergent frequency occurrences. As a contribution, there have been revealed seven new steps (with a low occurrence rate though), not identified in the previous studies: 'indicating a gap', 'presenting a hypothesis', 'stating the implications', 'stating the reliability of research procedures', 'mentioning the complexity of analysis', 'stating the author's contribution', 'acknowledging limitations''. Besides, the taxonomy of moves and the classification of the steps within them substantially differ from the patterns presented in the previous studies. This can be justified by the specific rhetorical structure of the analyzed Methodologies, which reflect a specific conceptual content and organizational peculiarities of structuring knowledge in the fields of linguistics and education. For an adequate understanding of information, an article should be constructed in a consistent way and have clear linguistic features. Writers employ different moves and steps of text structuring and devices of producing a communicative effect on readers. Currently, using various moves and steps for text structuring, writers undertake considerable pragmatic acts to persuasively argue and augment the acceptability of their methodological descriptions in a strongly competitive academic community.

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