| The discussion section of research articles(RAs),which usually brings together dimensions of research findings and disciplinary contributions,expands the significance of research from an individual study to a broader disciplinary field.This section,as a critical window for readers to understand the target research,serves as an essential tool for writers to discuss and promote research results.The complexity of the discussion makes this section considered one of the most demanding parts of the writing process.In recent years,the discussion section of RAs has gradually received attention from the linguistic community.Researchers usually analyze the communicative purposes and discourse structures of this part-genre and explore its rhetorical structures and linguistic realizations by move analysis.However,previous studies have not reached a consensus on the move organization and functions of the discussion section: the number of moves in move sequences proposed by previous studies varies from 3 to 11,and opinions on the frequency and necessity of each move are also different.In terms of linguistic expressions,extracting high-frequency formulaic languages using corpus tools is one of the important approaches.However,previous studies focused mainly on continuous phrases such as lexical bundles,and less attention has been paid to phrase-frames(pframes),a more flexible and widely distributed type.Moreover,few studies have combined move analysis with p-frames exploration to investigate linguistic realizations of each rhetorical move,which leads to a “function-form” gap in academic writing research and instruction.Studies on the discussion section of RAs have also noticed interdisciplinary differences in this part-genre,but prior research has paid less attention to the discussion in economics RAs.The economics RAs are,additionally,divided into theoretical,empirical,and econometric types,with distinctions in research paradigms and writing conventions.Recognizing the above-mentioned research gaps,the present study applied an innovative method connecting move analysis and p-frame identification facilitated by corpus tools to focus on the discussion section of empirical research articles(ERAs)in economics journals as well as investigated its rhetorical move organization and highfrequency p-frames in the moves.The self-built corpus in this study contained 95 discussion sections(90,413 tokens)from ERAs published in influential international economics journals from 2011 to 2021.Referring to move models proposed by previous studies and considering the characteristics of the economics corpus,this study manually annotated move-steps of each text of discussion and inductively summarized the move sequence of the discussion section of the economics ERAs.Moves were further classified into obligatory,conventional,and optional categories according to their frequencies in the corpus.After the rhetorical move identification,high-frequency fourword,five-word,and six-word p-frames in each move were extracted and then structurally and functionally classified.The move analysis result reveals that discussions of economics ERAs are generally realized by an eight-move sequence: Move 1-Managing the section,Move 2-Presenting background information,Move 3-Summarizing results,Move 4-Reporting results,Move5-Commenting on results,Move 6-Summarizing the study,Move 7-Evaluating the study,and Move 8-Deductions from the research.Among these moves,Move 2,Move 5,Move 7,and Move 8 are realized by multiple steps.The frequency data show that Move5-Commenting on results,which occurs in 90 out of the 95 discussions,is the most frequent one,hence an obligatory move.Move 2,Move 3,and Move 4 are conventional moves as they occur in more than 60% of the texts.The rest moves are optional.This study finds that the number of p-frames identified in the obligatory and conventional moves is much higher than that in the optional moves,which indicates that ERA writers tend to employ more discourse resources in the high-frequency moves to achieve the respective communicative purposes.The structural analysis of highfrequency p-frames in the obligatory and conventional moves reveals that function word frames account for the most significant proportion,followed by other content word frames and verb-based frames,while the distribution of p-frames varies across moves.Moreover,four-word p-frames tend to be function word structures,while five-word and six-word ones tend to favor verb-based frames and other content word frames.The functional analysis of p-frames shows that referential expressions account for the largest share,followed by discourse-organizers and stance expressions.However,the functional distribution of p-frames in different moves has different characteristics.Further analysis also reveals that the functions of p-frames and the communicative purposes of moves are correlated,and p-frames with different structures and functions support the realization of the communicative purposes of the rhetorical move they are located in.This study is instructive for writing the discussion section of ERAs in economics and is expected to inspire subsequent research on academic writing. |
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