A Comparative Genre-Based Analysis of Move-Step Structure of RAIs in Two Different Publication Contexts

This genre-based study investigates the move-step structure of two sets of English-medium research article introductions (RAIs) in the field of applied linguistics using Swales’ (1990, 2004) Create a Research Space (CARS) model of move/step analysis. A corpus of 30 RAIs from two English-medium research articles (15 International and 15 Local) was selected. The international research articles written for an international readership were selected from the journal English for Specific Purposes, while the local research articles, written for local readers, were selected from Arab World English Journal. The findings indicated that although the three moves suggested by the CARS (Swales, 1990, 2004) model appeared in the two subcorpora, some variation was observed with respect to the range of moves employed in each subcorpus. As expected, Move 2 was not always found in texts in the Local subcorpus. In terms of steps and sub-steps analysis, the findings showed the three steps and sub-steps of Move 1 are conventional in the International and Local applied linguistics RAIs. Further, while M2-S1B is conventional and M2-S1A is optional in the Local subcorpus, these two sub-steps of Move 2 are conventional in the International subcorpus. There were no striking differences between the two subcorpora with regard to the employment of the proposed steps of Move 3. Limitations and the implications of the findings, as well as recommendation of some suggestions for future research are provided.