A Functional Exploration To Journal Abstracts And Their Generic Structures

As the rate of publications devoted to research information continues to increase worldwide, abstracts continue to grow in importance. This paper attempts a functional exploration to journal abstracts and their generic structures.The paper is divided into four chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the data and the aim of the study. Chapter 2 is the most important part in which seven abstracts are analyzed from the perspective of register with the resources for analysis in Halliday's Functional Grammar. Through the register analysis, the typical encoding patterns in abstracts are sorted out and a functional interpretation for the choice of those patterns is presented. In Chapter 3, emphasis is laid on the communicative purpose of the abstracts and their generic structures. After comparing and examining other scholars' models concerning the schematic structure of abstracts, a model of my own is suggested for further contest and modification. The last chapter is devoted to the limitations of the paper and the possibilities of further research.