A comparative genre-based investigation into the results sections of quantitative and qualitative research articles on tourism
Novice writers in universities often find it difficult to produce research reports in a way which is accepted by the academic discourse community that includes experienced examiners, editors and reviewers of established journals in the discipline concerned. One major area of difficulty is associated...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English English |
| Published: |
2017
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/38980/1/24%20PAGES.pdf https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/38980/2/FULLTEXT.pdf |
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| Summary: | Novice writers in universities often find it difficult to produce research reports in a way which is accepted by the academic discourse community that includes experienced examiners, editors and reviewers of established journals in the discipline concerned. One major area of difficulty is associated with the writing of the Results section, which constitutes the core section of a research report where new findings are revealed. In recent decades, a number of genre-based studies in specific fields (e.g., Brett, 1994; Kanoksilapatham, 2005; Lim 2009; Posteguillo, 1999; Thompson, 1993; Weissberg & Buker, 1990) have dismissed the assumption that writers of research reports do not normally include comments and methodological procedures in the reporting of findings. Nevertheless, such studies have not been carried out on Tourism research articles, and more importantly, attention has yet to be directed to the differences between the Results sections of research reports based on quantitative methods and those grounded on qualitative research paradigms. In this regard, this study has been carried out to fill this gap in literature. Using a move-step analytical framework proposed by Swales (1990, 2004), this study investigates the information elements and linguistic mechanisms employed by writers in the Results sections of 20 quantitative research articles and 20 qualitative research articles on Tourism. The textual analysis in this study is also supported by data gathered from interviews with four specialist informants. The results of this study shows that there are differences in the prevalence of rhetorical moves and steps of quantitative and qualitative Tourism Results sections. My findings suggest that over-generalizations need to be avoided when reporting the prominence of moves and steps in Tourism Results sections, and differentiation needs to be made between quantitative and qualitative Results sections. It has also been discovered that the linguistic resources employed to achieve the various communicative functions in quantitative Tourism Results sections differ from those employed in qualitative Tourism Results sections, especially with respect to the choices of specific clause structures, verb forms, noun phrases and phrasal combinations. This study has significant implications for the teaching and learning of English for academic purposes, particularly in the area of equipping novice writers and university students with skills needed to write research reports in the field of Tourism. |
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