a b s t r a c tPrevious studies have indicated that the introductions of PhD theses and research articles are similar in their rhetorical features. In contrast, it has been suggested that metadiscourse as a rhetorical device is constructed in a different manner in these texts. However, very few studies have sought to empirically validate this assumption. This paper investigates how research writers construct metadiscourse in the introductions of their PhD theses and subsequently published research articles. The analysis shows that the majority of the writers make greater use of metadiscourse in their article introductions. The most significant changes include greater use of phrases referring to previous research, less reference to other parts of the text, and still less use of phrases signalling authorial presence. Close examination reveals that these variations derive from genre-specific features, including that writers of PhD thesis introductions present previews of the subsequent chapters. This paper closes by arguing that the variations can also be ascribed to the nature of the PhD thesis as an educational genre and that of research articles as a professional genre in which writers need to survive severe competition to get their manuscripts published.

No abstract

Constructing a coherent text and achieving genre-specific communicative purposes are crucial aspects of academic writing. However, to date, it remains unclear how coherence and genre are related to each other conceptually. This paper seeks to extend previous research on the influence of genre on coherence relations by examining how writers of applied linguistics research articles (RAs) organise sentences in the discussion section to achieve communicative purposes of the RA discussion genre. The analyses suggest that the writers of the selected discussions might have related sentences to each other differently depending on the purposes they sought to achieve. Possible reasons for relational features are considered in light of the nature of the RA discussion genre and/or the applied linguistics discipline.

This study is an extension of previous research on how writers of research articles (RAs) structure their texts to be coherent in the process of achieving communicative purposes of the RA genre. It examines how RA writers relate sentences in establishing a niche for their studies in the introduction section. Genre analysis methods and Rhetorical Structure Theory are used to analyse 40 applied linguistics RA introductions. The findings show that the RA writers who establish a niche by indicating a gap in previous research tend to use a concessive or contrastive relation to relate the gap statements to the descriptions of previous studies. The writers who establish a niche by indicating how their studies would extend previous research in the field tend to use a background relation to claim a niche based on the specific studies. The writers who indicate a real world problem for the niche establishment tend to use a background relation to reveal a niche based on contextual information surrounding the problem. Possible reasons for the selection of the relations are discussed in terms of the influence of the nature of the RA genre and/or the applied linguistics discipline.