CONTRASTIVE MOVE ANALYSIS: PERSIAN AND ENGLISH RESEARCH ARTICLES ABSTRACTS IN LAW DISCILLINE

Abstract

Abstracts are important parts of research articles because researchers are very likely to read the abstract first and then they decide to continue or stop reading the research article. Therefore, it is important to write an effective abstract in order to produce acceptable research articles in the international discourse community of specific disciplines.So, the study of the rhetorical structure of research article genres is of crucial importance in academic writing investigations. The purpose of this study is to investigate research article abstracts written in English and Persian languages in the law discipline. To this end, 90 research article abstracts in ten law journals in English and Persian languageswere investigated to examinethe move structures and the verb tenses of each move. The move structures were analyzed based on Hyland's (2000) five-move structure model. In addition, Tseng's (2011) model was used to analyze the verb tenses for each move in the abstracts.The results show that all moves (i.e. Introduction, Purpose, Method, Result, and Conclusion) were considered as obligatory structural moves in English research article abstracts, while move one (Introduction) and move two (Purpose) served as obligatory moves in Persian abstracts. Regarding the use of verb tenses in each move, the findings indicate that the present tense was the preferred tense in all moves in English abstracts, but the past tense was the preferred tense only in the method section in Persian abstracts. It is hoped that this study could help native Iranian students and researchers of law as well as legal professionals to benefit from thorough understanding of specific texts and would guide them in producing academic discourse following the required norms and thus would increase their chances for publication and effectively participate in international academic discourse communities.