Discourse competence and abstract writing: Managing the dual identity of student and researcher

Abstract

Undergraduate final-year dissertations abstracts are academic texts written by students starting out as researchers. Although there are studies on abstracts produced by experts, few of them have dealt with abstracts produced by students. In this paper, abstracts written by future graduates in Applied Languages are analysed. This is done at three levels: supratextual, macro-textual (rhetorical moves) and micro-textual (metadiscourse markers). The analysis shows how rhetorical structures that are prototypical of the genre appear, as do some emergent moves. Regarding metadiscourse resources, students use a wide range of markers, the most prominent ones being metadiscourse structure markers (encapsulators —also known as shell nouns— and ordinal markers). The main finding is that the abstracts are hybrid texts: halfway between academic discourse, produced by a student to be assessed, and specialised discourse, produced by and directed to expert readers.