Investigating the research article discussion sections in chemical engineering : textual analyses and instructional explorations

Abstract

The discussion section is a key component of a research article. For novice writers, it can be a challenging undertaking due to its rhetorical and linguistic complexity. This study adopted a mixed-method approach to a three-stage investigation of research article discussion sections of a specific engineering discipline (i.e., chemical engineering). In Stage 1, six linguistic regularities of the discussion sections were identified using Biber’s multidimensional analysis on the self-compiled specialized corpus consisting of 213 texts. Swales’ genre analysis was adopted to investigate the rhetorical organization of the discussion sections in 40 texts from this corpus. In addition, the rhetorical and linguistic variations in discussion sections of highly-cited research articles and less highly-cited research articles were explored. The comparative analyses suggested that the former samples differed from the latter samples in their use of the Comment on results move and stance-taking expressions (i.e., hedges, boosters, adjective attitudinal markers, and first-person pronouns). In Stage 2, in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight chemical engineering scientists to elicit their interpretations of the rhetorical and linguistic choices observed in Stage 1, and uncover their general understanding of writing up this section. The findings suggested that the scientists agreed on the overall significance of the discussion sections in chemical engineering research articles. However, they may have incomplete knowledge of the conventions of rhetorical moves and the linguistic regularities involved in this section, which could be accentuated in academic writing instruction to raise novice scientists’ rhetorical and linguistic consciousness. Stage 3 was a pedagogical trial of a genre-analytic and corpus-informed writing workshop with a small group of chemical engineering student participants. The instructional activities were informed by the results of textual analyses and interview accounts. The aim of this pedagogic application was to explore how the novice writers engaged in the corpus-informed instruction, and to evaluate the effectiveness of this pedagogical approach reported by them. Data included observation notes, audio recordings and evaluation forms. The results showed that the workshop instruction and exercises enhanced participants’ understanding of the rhetorical organization and linguistic regularities of discussion sections. The participants reported their confidence in writing this section, indicated their willingness to make use of what they had learned in this workshop in future writing, and also provided feedback for further improvement of the workshop. The study contributes to the existing research by combining move analysis and multidimensional analysis to investigate both the rhetorical organization and the genre-specific language patterns of the discussion sections of research articles, with follow-up interviews to explain the rhetorical and linguistic choices made by published writers. It also extends the textual results by developing them into workshop instruction material. The three-stage investigation that jointly examined both textual and pedagogical aspects has allowed for a holistic understanding of researching and teaching research article discussion sections in a specific discipline.