A Comparison of Thematic Choices and Thematic Progression Patterns in the Research Articles of Well-established and Emerging Disciplines

Abstract

Several studies have employed the theme-rheme construct to examine the generic profile of research articles (RAs). However, they have mostly focused on the subject matter and nature of disciplines, and other disciplinary characteristics as contextual factors which can impact the genre realization have not been considered in the discourse analysis research. This work, therefore, investigates thematic choices and thematic progression patterns in the RA in relation to the status of disciplines as well-established or emerging fields. To this end, a corpus of 240 RAs of mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering, horticulture, and environmental science were analyzed using Halliday's (1994) framework of thematicity and McCabe's (1999) model of thematic progression (TP). The results showed significant differences in the distributions of unmarked and marked themes as well as the patterns of thematic progression between the well-established and emerging disciplines. Based on the findings of this study, we suggest further consideration of the status of disciplines in discourse studies which can serve disciplinary research and contribute to the body of research on science.

The Realization of Thematic Progression in Online Ielts Writing Task 2 Samples in an English-Learning Website: A Case Study

“…Meanwhile, DHP and STP share comparable figures with merely 3.3% each. This order of frequency is similar to many studies in the existing body of literature (Babaii et al, 2016;Jalilifar, 2010;Nguyen & Nguyen, 2018;Wei, 2016). However, one notable finding emerging from the analysis is that the frequency of SRP is found in this study much surpasses other studies (Ebrahimi & Khedri, 2012;Jalilifar, 2010;Soleymanzadeh & Gholami, 2014;Wei, 2016).…”

“…This pattern is also noted to be beneficial for the readers in that it provides a clear layout for them to expect and catch what the passage is about (Jalilifar, 2010). STP, similarly, is found to be much less common than the others, with frequencies in essays recorded to range from less than 1% in Wei (2016) to approximately 4% in Babaii et al (2016), Jalilifar (2010), Ebrahimi and Khedri (2011). The reason for such low frequency is that this pattern positions new information in the theme, which does not follow the conventional Given-to-New approach preferred by writers, as highlighted by many studies, for example Yang (2015).…”

“…Another field of interest is the instruction of TP for better application in writing, which has been carried out by Nurdianingsih and Purnama (2017), Purnomo (2014) and Yang (2008). Other studies also investigate the use of TP in other genres apart from students' writings, most commonly articles (Babaii et al, 2016;Jalilifar, 2010;Martıńez, 2003). However, TP-related studies into IELTS Writing Task 2 are limited.…”

The Coherence Analysis of Students' Analytical Exposition Texts

“…The result of topical Theme as the dominant type of Theme is in line with the results of previous studies committed by Az-Zahro (2017), Babaii et al (2016), Jalilifar et al (2017, Katrini and Farikah (2015), Setiawati (2016), and Undayasari and Saleh (2018). Those previous studies figured out that topical Theme was frequently used by the students instead of textual and interpersonal Theme.…”

Marked themes in English and Norwegian academic texts in the field of didactics

“…For instance, Heng and Ebrahimi (2012) found that abstracts in research articles in applied linguistics had a lower proportion of marked themes than research articles in economics. Similarly, Babaii et al (2016) investigated the frequency of marked themes in research articles in mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering, horticulture, and environmental sciences, concluding that marked themes are more frequent in mechanical engineering than in the three other disciplines. One final example comes from a study of research-article introductions (Valipour et al, 2017), where the results indicate that chemistry exhibits a higher proportion of marked themes than does linguistics and software engineering.…”