A Contrastive Study of Rhetorical Functions of Citation in Iranian and International ELT Scopus Journals

Abstract

Writing an academic article requires researchers to provide support for their works by learning how to cite the works of others. Various studies regarding the analysis of citation in M.A theses have been done, while little work has been done on comparison of citations among ELT scopus journal articles, and so the dearth of research in this area demands further investigation into citations in articles. To this aim, the researcher of the present study compares the use of citations between 60 Iranian and international ELT sopus journal articles. Citation frameworks are Petric [4] and Thompson and Tribble [3]. Each framework is further divided into sub-categories. The findings show that Iranian researchers unlike the international ones tend to use integral more than non-integral citations, according to Thomspson and Tribble’s [3] framework, indicating that they emphasize the writers rather than information. Analysis of citations based on Petric’s [4] framework demonstrates that the use of citation for non-attribution functions is found to be considerably lower in Iranian articles than in international articles. In conclusion, the study argues that functions of citations should receive more attention in ELT courses to raise the awareness level of researchers in order to avoid the practice of plagiarism.