Rhetorical structure of integrated results and discussion chapter in master’s dissertations across disciplines

Abstract

Writing a dissertation is the most challenging task for students, especially the Integrated Results and Discussion chapter. One solution would be to offer them a template of the rhetorical flow of this chapter. However, to date, a limited number of studies have been conducted on the rhetorical movement of this chapter. Therefore, the rhetorical units of Integrated Results and Discussion chapters of 40 Master’s dissertations in the hard and soft science disciplines obtained from a Malaysian local public university were investigated. The findings indicated that this chapter focused predominantly on presenting the results followed by commenting on them. Disciplinary variation was observed in the use of ‘referring to previous research’ and ‘making overt claims or generalizations’ which were observed more in the dissertations in the soft sciences. Besides, ‘invalidating results’ was found more in the dissertations in the hard sciences. To conclude, knowing the prevalent moves may heighten the awareness of novice postgraduate students to align their writing to the academic writing conventions. Furthermore, awareness on the disciplinary variations of the use of certain rhetorical moves would sensitize novice writers to the preferred disciplinary style of writing Integrated Results and Discussion chapter.