Analytical Appeals of Move Structures in Systematically Organising and Communicating Research Ideas

Abstract

This study sought to examine the use of a specific type of rhetorical move structure known as the ILMC (Introduction - Literature - Method - Conclusion) organisational model in writing academic research abstract compositions (RACs). A linear structure of writing development commonly associated with native English writers would aid in creating the logical appeal of the academic research composition. This was substantiated by the theoretical concept of Aristotelian Rhetoric to underscore the significance of rhetorical appeal in the form of logos or logical domain shown by the academic research writers. The research design was content analysis in which 480 RACs were employed based on the criterion method of sampling from eighty-eight indexed journals both from Malaysia and International research open-access journal repositories. A qualitative software of NVivo12 was used by the present researcher in manually analysing the employment of the ILMC move structures and its sub-types. The major findings revealed that writers of English as a second language (WESL) from Malaysia employed the sequential form of ILMC move structure, being the standard characteristic of the AngloEuropean style of straightforward writing development in expanding the main points of a topic under examination. However, they had difficulties in ascertaining that all parts of the ILMC move structure were retained as they showed more missing moves dedicated to Literature and Methodology sections than the English writers from the UK, US, and Australia utilised these moves for the same sections. It was concluded that Malaysian ESL writers showed the importance of showing the standard linear writing structure commonly used by the international writers but did not yet master the rhetorical functions of the component parts at the discourse level. Future research can be directed to explore the cultural and noncultural contributions behind such rhetorical patterns of academic writing development.