Rhetorical Moves Analysis in Soft and Hard Science Lecturers’ Master’s Thesis and Dissertation Abstracts

Abstract

Move analysis is usually used to analyse academic writing and to investigate the rhetorical pattern of the text. However, the analysis of rhetorical moves in the abstract of lecturers' final paper in different disciplines may not have been done. This study aims to analyse and compare the rhetorical moves (pattern), steps, and the language features used in the abstracts of the final papers. The researcher focused on the abstract of master theses and dissertations from different disciplines. This study analysed 4 abstracts from English lecturer for the soft science field and Mathematic lecturer for the hard science field in Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia. The Five Move Analysis by Hyland (2000) is used as the framework of this study. The study indicated that both of the lecturers in different disciplines commonly wrote all the moves which are Introduction-Purpose-Method-Product-Conclusion in their abstracts. However, the percentage of the used moves for each abstract are different. Besides that, there is a cycle of moves in the abstract for the hard science field. There is no significant contrast between two disciplines on steps usage. For the linguistic features, both of the abstract use similar features. In conclusion, both disciplines have their signatures and similarities in writing an abstract.