| Scope and method of study. The purpose of this study was to perform a genre analysis of the discourse features of the 1996 TESOL convention abstracts. It was posited that the aims and goals of a discourse community would influence the discourse features that appear in a text. A total of 237 abstracts from two interest sections--research (90) and ESL in higher education (147)--were analyzed from the original corpus of 1909 abstracts. These two sections represent two mini-discourse communities, each with differing goals. The research interest section functions to promote empirical studies, being more critical about the conventions for doing proper research. The higher education interest section, though also promoting research, emphasizes didactic concerns more. Two types of analysis were conducted--moves analysis and citation analysis--to compare the two interest sections and the accepted to the rejected abstracts to note if any differences occurred due to the differing goals of the interest sections.;Findings and conclusions. The differing goals and aims did have an effect on forming certain discourse features. Whereas the research interest section accepted only empirical abstracts with the IMRD move structure, the higher education interest section also accepted a sub-genre of pedagogical abstracts with an alternate move structure. In the moves analysis, difference was found in the way the research interest section used the Results sub-moves, using a higher frequency of the Detailed Results sub-moves. Not all major moves and sub-moves were found to be obligatory. Furthermore, sequential ordering of the major moves and the sub-moves was noted as being an important discourse feature. Even when major moves and sub-moves were left out, sequential order was usually maintained. In the citation analysis, there was significantly greater use of citations in the accepted abstracts of the research interest section compared to the higher education interest section. Each of these differences may be influenced by the needs of each separate discourse community within the larger discourse community of TESOL. |
