Rhetorical Move and Linguistic Features Comparative Analysis of Research Article Abstracts by Authors of Different Organizational Backgrounds

Abstract

The readers' first impression of the articles' overall contents relies on what is presented and how they are presented in the abstract. Previous studies have quite extensively looked at the rhetorical structure of abstract, specifically comparing abstracts of different fields of study, languages, and authors' background. However, inquiries that especially examine the extent to which the authors' organizational affiliations may reflect the rhetorical organization and linguistic features of their research articles' abstracts have escaped attention. This study aims to compare the rhetorical moves and linguistic features of research article abstracts by authors with different organizational affiliations. The abstracts represented in this study were all published in Indonesian Journal of Science and Technology (IJoST) and were Scopus-indexed. A total of six abstracts were chosen to be analyzed in which the authors of three abstracts were affiliated with Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia (UPI) while the other three were affiliated with other universities. Hyland's (2000) model was employed to analyze the rhetorical organization of the abstracts. The findings revealed that the rhetorical move with the highest number of occurrences is Move 1-Introduction, and the move with the least number of occurrences is Move 5-Conclusion. Furthermore, the use of present tense and active voice was dominant in all six abstracts. The final results and findings of this study is expected to carve an in-depth insight for related future studies within this scope of analysis and is meant to act as a guideline for novice academic writers in constructing RA abstracts.