The thematic structure in research article abstracts: Variations across disciplines

Abstract

This study has investigated the thematic structure of RA abstracts published in business administration, applied linguistics, accounting, physics, chemistry, and computer science disciplines from the perspectives of topical, textual, and interpersonal themes. The results showed that the unmarked topical themes were the most prevalent types in the RA abstracts, while the interpersonal themes were the least frequent. Concerning the textual themes, the results revealed some disciplinary variations. For example, the computer science abstracts relied heavily on conjunctive adjuncts while applied linguistics abstracts made a sort of balance between the conjunctions and conjunctive adjuncts. Additionally, the results showed that the adversative type was the most commonly used in all disciplines except in computer science where the temporal type was the most frequent element, and the accounting abstracts have had both adversative and additive types with the same frequency.

The Status of Theme in Research Article Abstracts in Seven Dentistry Subdisciplines: A Text-Based Study of Intradisciplinary Variations and Similarities in Thematic Choices and Thematic Progression Patterns

“…This finding converges with several studies of Theme in RA abstracts (e.g. Alotaibi, 2020;Ebrahimi, 2016;Ghadessy, 1999). The low percentage of the interpersonal Theme type is in line with what would be expected in objective, non-evaluative scientific RA discourse (Gray & Biber, 2012;Hyland, 2005).…”

“…This indicates the authors' awareness that maintaining the same entity (or topic) as the Theme of more than one clause develops a topic-focused text. This finding is in line with many studies (Alotaibi, 2020;Ebrahimi, 2016;Ebrahimi & Khedri, 2011;Ghadessy, 1999;Leong, 2016). For example, Leong (2016) investigated 200 RA abstracts from science and humanities disciplines and found that topical Themes were used more in scientific abstracts.…”

“…Whereas few studies investigated thematic choices and TP patterns in RA abstracts from one discipline (Lorés, 2004;Nwogu & Bloor, 1991), others conducted interdisciplinary studies of variations and similarities in the thematic organization of RA abstracts across a range of disciplines (Alotaibi, 2020;Ebrahimi, 2016;Ebrahimi & Khedri, 2011;Ghadessy, 1999;Leong, 2016). Nwogu and Bloor (1991) investigated TP in medical RA abstracts and the findings revealed that constant and linear TP patterns were evenly employed.…”

“…The findings confirm the presence of disciplinary variations in the use of Theme. Alotaibi (2020) argues that interpersonal Themes are more favored in soft disciplines than in hard disciplines. This indicates that the sciences favor a more direct style of writing.…”

“…Whereas few studies investigated thematic choices and thematic progression (TP) patterns in RA abstracts of one discipline (Lorés, 2004;Nwogu & Bloor, 1991), others conducted interdisciplinary (across disciplines) studies of variations and similarities in the thematic organization of RA abstracts across a range of disciplines (Alotaibi, 2020;Ebrahimi, 2016;Ebrahimi & Khedri, 2011;Ghadessy, 1999;Leong, 2016).The study of Theme in dentistry RA abstracts does not appear to have attracted this kind of research. Moreover, as epistemologies (or demands) are unique to each dentistry subdiscipline (or dental specialty), it is essential to investigate if there are intradisciplinary (within the same discipline) variations in the use of Theme in RA abstracts of various subfields of dentistry.…”