| The past two decades have witnessed a flow of interesting studies on the writing in academic and research settings for specific purposes. ESP genre analysis, a most frequently used approach, has drawn greater attention from language educators, especially those concerned with English for Specific Purpose (ESP) and English for Academic Purpose (EAP) teaching. Research articles (RAs), an academic genre, have lately aroused great interest due to the important role they play for the scientific community.Prior ESP studies on RAs can be summarized into two groups according to the differences in their research focus. One group has concentrated their studies on the structural organization of research RAs, dissertations or other professional writings, and the other group has focused on the study of some particular features of written academic discourse, such as the use of hedging, modality and reporting verbs. Many researchers have examined the structural organization and linguistic features of certain specific sections of RAs, but only a few researchers have conducted research on complete RAs. Still fewer researchers, to our knowledge, have conducted studies on the variations of complete English medical RAs in a certain period.The present study was designed to explore some possible changes or variations in the structural organization and linguistic features of complete medical RAs during a certain period by comparing, at macro-and micro-level, English medical RAs published between the periods of 1985-1989 and 2000-2004.We established two equal-sized corpora for the study: Corpus A with 25 complete RAs published in 1985-1989 and Corpus B with 25 complete RAs published in 2000-2004. The samples selected for both Corpus A and Corpus B were randomly chosen from the same 5 leading English medical journals by a two-round random stratified selection. The selected RAs were all primary RAs written by native English speakers with a clear IMRD (Introduction --- Methods --- Results --- Discussion) format.We adopted Swales'(1990) CARS model and Nwogu's (1997) 5-step procedure in manually tagging the moves of the RAs in the two corpora and employed Salager-Meyer's (1992) analysis method and Kuo's (1999) method respectively in examining the verb tenses and the first personal pronouns. Biber's method was used in performing the normalization of frequency counts. Student's t test, Chi-Square Test and Fisher Exact Test were applied to analyzing the results of the two corpora. The major findings from our study were:1) In terms of the occurrence frequency of moves in the sample RAs, significant differences between the periods of 1985-1989 and 2000-2004 were found in Move 1, Move 6, Move 8, and Move 9. Move 1 was present in 11 of the 25 RAs (44%) in Corpus A while 24 of the 25 (96%) in Corpus B and Move 6 was found in 10 of the 25 RAs (40%) in corpus A while a significantly higher occurrence frequency was found in the RAs in Corpus B (24/25, 96%) (both p<0.001). Move 8 was found in 12 of the 25 RAs (48%) in Corpus A and 4 of the 25 RAs (16%) in Corpus B and Move 9 was found in 23 of the 25 RAs (92%) in Corpus A, but only 11 out of the 25 RAs (44%) in Corpus B ( both p<0.05).2) The length of Move 6 in Corpus B (the longest of 851 words and the shortest 43 words, averaging 237.7 words) was significantly longer than that in Corpus A (the longest of 220 words and the shortest 14 words, averaging 54.6 words) (p<0.05).3) The simple past tense was the most frequently used tense in the medical RAs in both Corpus A (67.14%) and Corpus B (67.96%), followed by the simple present tense (25.33%, Corpus A; 26.43%, Corpus B) and the present perfect tense (5.61%, Corpus A; 7.53%, Corpus B). Significant difference was found in the occurrence frequencies of the three most frequently used tenses at corpus-level between the two corpora (p<0.05), but significant move-level difference was found only in Move 3, Move 7 and Move 10 between the two corpora (p<0.05). 4) The first personal pronouns were employed exclusively in plural forms in the medical RAs in the two corpora, but their occurrence was significantly higher in medical RAs published in the period of 2000-2004 (Corpus B) than that in Corpus A (p<0.001).From the results above, we have drawn the following conclusions:1) In the structure of medical RAs, the"status"(obligatory or optional) of some moves, as defined by Nwogu (1997), has changed in present-day medical RAs with the passage of time. Though the"status"of most moves remains the same as those in Nwogu's 11-move model for medical RAs, significant differences have been found in Move 1, Move 6, Move 8 and Move 9. We have found that Move 1 (Presenting background information) and Move 6 (Describing data-analysis procedures) have changed from"optional"to"obligatory", while Move 9 (Highlighting overall research outcome) has changed from"obligatory"to"optional". Though Move 8 (Indicating non-consistent observations) still remains as"optional"as defined by Nwogu (1997), we have found that more present-day medical RA writers tend to avoid using Move 8 in their RAs. The changes in the structure of medical RAs may come from the attitude changes of the present-day medical RA writers. The attitude changes may be the results of changes of such socio-cultural factors as science evolution, the requirements of the journals and the influence of academic writing instruction.2) In the linguistic features of medical RAs, some linguistic features, namely, the verb tenses and personal pronouns have also significantly changed with the passage of time. In the aspect of the use of verb tenses, though the most frequently used verb tenses in present-day medical RAs are still --- in decreasing order of frequency --- the simple past, the simple present and the present perfect, as reported by Heslot (1985) and the choice of verb tenses at move-level mostly stays unchanged, some significant changes have been found in Move 3, Move 7 and Move 10. In Move 3 (Presenting new research), the occurrence frequency of the simple past tense has increased, while that of the present perfect tense has decreased. In Move 7 (Indicating consistent observations), the occurrence frequency of the simple past tense has significantly increased. In Move 10 (Explaining specific research outcomes), the occurrence frequency of the simple present tense has significantly increased and that of the present perfect tense has significantly decreased. In the aspect of the use of personal pronouns, we have found that plural form first personal pronoun and its other cases (including subjective, objective and possessive cases) are still almost the exclusive forms used in medical RAs, but the present-day medical RA writers tend to use in their RAs significantly more plural form first personal pronouns, especially the subjective case. The changes in the choice of tenses and first personal pronouns can also be ascribed to some changes in the attitudes of the present-day medical writers, for example, an eager desire to seek cooperation and solidarity with expected readers, or rhetorically convey a strong sense of commitment of the researchers towards their piece of research. The present study was a preliminary exploration on the changes of English medical RAs published between 1985-1989 and 2000-2004, and it was based on a relatively limited database, with 25 RAs in each period. A study on a larger scale and for a longer period may have provided more evidence. Studies of the variation of RAs over time in other disciplines certainly merit further investigation. |
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