Move-Step Structures in English vs. Persian Research-Article Abstracts Across Three Disciplines (2022-2024)
Researchers often have to develop abstracts in both English and their native language when intending to get their research articles (RAs) published in scholarly journals. Some, however, encounter challenges in this process, one of which is related to the rhetorical moves (RMs). This study endeavored to examine the RMs and steps of English and Persian RA abstracts recently published in top-tier journals across hard, medical, and soft disciplines. To this end, 150 English and 150 Persian abstracts from the disciplinary domains of Computers and Electrical Engineering (CEE), Psychiatry, and Applied Linguistics (AL), published in Scopus or Web of Science-indexed journals from 2022 to 2024, were selected, according to journal indexing, abstract policy, and availability. The corpus comprised primarily unstructured abstracts, with the exception of Psychiatry journals, which followed disciplinary conventions for structured formats. The abstracts were analyzed adopting Hyland's (2000) five-move framework. The findings suggested that the Product, Purpose, and Method moves were the most frequent in the abstracts (89.33%, 82.66%, and 81.66%, respectively). The most common RM pattern was the five-move organization of Introduction-Purpose-Method-Product-Conclusion (38.33%) in the RA abstracts. Inferential analyses revealed that the probability of observing the full pattern was over 0.70 in Psychiatry but only 0.20 in CEE, with Persian abstracts showing greater structural diversity. They also demonstrated that the Conclusion move was significantly more prevalent in Psychiatry abstracts than in CEE, and in English AL abstracts than in their Persian counterparts. Furthermore, the outcomes indicated that the abstracts typically contained an average of 5.86 steps, with the Purpose step being the most recurrent (16.76%), followed by the Product and Instrument steps (16.3% and 14.6%, respectively). Statistical modeling of steps identified significant language-discipline interactions, with the Definition and Conclusion steps showing the most pronounced variation. Additionally, it was found that the step pattern of the Prominence-Gap-Purpose-Participant-Instrument-Product-Implication was the most frequently used in abstract development. This study’s findings may give valuable insights into the patterns of English and Persian abstracts in various fields of study, which can be beneficial for English for Academic Purposes and academic writing courses.
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Shahidipour, V. (2026). Move-Step Structures in English vs. Persian Research-Article Abstracts Across Three Disciplines (2022-2024), Research Result. Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, 12 (1), 236–261.
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Corpus Material
Computers and Electrical Engineering. (2022–2024). Elsevier.
Journal of Iranian Association of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. (2022–2024). ISC, Scopus.
The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. (2022–2024). Sage.
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The Language Related Research. (2022–2024). ISC, Scopus.
The author would like to acknowledge the significant contributions of colleagues and experts in the fields of Computers and Electrical Engineering, Psychiatry, and Applied Linguistics to this study.