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egularities in the organisation of various communicative events (Bhatia 1993). Genre analysis, as the last phase in the history of ESP (Lakić 1999), has overcome these disadvantages of discourse analysis. 1.2. GENRE ANALYSIS Genre analysis can be defined as a study of language used in appropriate settings (Swales 1990) or “the study of situated linguistic behaviour in institutionalised academic or professional settings” (Bhatia 2004). Therefore, it analyses various discourse types used in appropriate surroundings, having suitable structure and different communicative functions. We have approached the analysis of the rhetorical structure of abstracts in political science from the genre analysis perspective for the reason that it has enabled us to determine the rhetorical organisation of abstracts, as a type of academic discourse. Having in mind the fact that the research article abstract (henceforth RA abstract/s) is a structural and institutional genre, this approach has shown as an adequate, especially when it is taken into account that genre analysis focuses on “analysing and describing textual patterns of different genres” (Chen 2008). Regarding that the genre analysis emphasises the crucial importance of rhetorical text structure, this discipline has begun to “influence how writing is taught by providing models of different communicative activities” (Hyland 1992). This is the additional driving force for having chosen genre analysis as the main methodological approach to our research. 1.3. PURPOSE OF THE RESEARCH The aim of this paper is to describe the structure of RA abstracts in the discipline of political science. Having regard to the fact that the object of our research is the abstracts chosen from three fields of political science: social, election and foreign policy, the additional aim is to determine whether there are certain structural variations in the analysed abstracts in the mentioned fields. As it has been mentioned above, the analysis is methodologically motivated. The analysis is focused on the exploration of the connection between the rhetorical abstracts organisation and its distinctive linguistic features as well. As it has been mentioned above, the analysis is methodologically motivated. 2.1. CORPUS 2. MATERIALS AND METHODS The paper is based on the analysis of 48 RA abstracts in English written by academic writers in three fields of political science: social, election and foreign policy. The corpus has been used from six prominent British journals: - Journal of Social Policy (Cambridge University Press – UK) and Global Social Policy (Sage publications – UK) (16 abstracts in the field of social policy have been taken from these journals); - Political Analysis (Oxford University Press - UK) and Publius: The Journal of Federalism (Oxford University Press - UK) (16 abstracts in the field of election policy have been taken from the listed journals); 80
- International Politics (Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. – England) and Cambridge Review of International Affairs (Routledge – UK) represent the journals where we have found 16 abstracts belonging to the field of foreign policy. The abstracts studied are coded in our paper as SPa1 – SPa8, SPb1 – SPb8 (social policy), EPa1 – EPa8, EPb1 – EPb8 (election policy) and FPa1 – FPa8, FPb1 – FPb8 (foreign policy). The abstracts numbered a1 – a2 are from one journal and those numbered b1 – b8 are from the other. 2.2. METHODOLOGY This research article is focused on the analysis of the rhetorical structure of the mentioned corpus and its typical linguistic characteristics as well. We have approached our research from the point of view of genre and discourse analyses. Namely, we have used Bhatia’s model (1993) as the starting point in our analysis. It consists of four moves: - Introducing purpose - Describing methodology - Summarising results - Presenting conclusions Bhatia’s analysis is founded, as he says, on “a typical example of an abstract” (Bhatia 1993). The way in which Bhatia has come to the stated model is not given, nor are corpus data denoted or the discipline the corpus might belong to. 3. RESULTS This paper aims at presenting a model used in three fields of political science: social, election and foreign policy. Using the afore-mentioned model as the starting point in our analysis, we have found two more moves. Therefore, our model includes six moves with obligatory and optional steps. Table outlines the general model found in the analysed abstracts from political science discipline and the frequency of the moves and steps in its three fields. Background represents the first move included in the structure of the half of the analysed abstracts in social and foreign policy (see Table 1). Its frequency in the field of election policy is somewhat higher (56.25%). The table illustrates that this move is composed of two steps. Step 1a and Step 1d are dominant in foreign policy, whereas Step 1c is prevailing in social and Step 1d in election policy. These data imply that the authors of the analysed abstracts choose the steps in which they introduce the topics of their abstracts and simultaneously their research articles. When the authors want to draw readers’ attention to a topic, they use the noun phrases a central place, this centrality, major importance, and the adjectives important, serious and dominant, functioning as the signals of researchers’ interest in the topic (Step 1a), as in the example that follows: (1) “Durable governors,” that is, governors who have had more than eight years of continuous service and won three or more elections in the past four decades, are of major importance for debates over limits on gubernatorial tenure. (EPa5) Step 1b, presenting the topic using comparison or contrast, is mostly marked by the use of the connector while: 81
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JOURNAL OF LINGUISTIC STUDIES 1
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EDITORIAL BOARD EDITOR Assist. Prof
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FOREWORD The sixth issue of the Jou
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3. RESULTATS Les verbes introducteu
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« J'ai soif, oh! j'ai soif! grogna
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« Je l’ai cru, admet Morpion [
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REFERENCES Actualités en Afrique.
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…it is a little disappointing to
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29.28% 5.82% 20 64.89% Figure 1. Di
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a) majority of computers run operat
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Pešikan, M. (1970). Naš književn
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apply in the case of text as in the
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9. DISCUSSION In the previous secti
Page 30 and 31: factors. Stoichiţoiu (2001) claims
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Page 34 and 35: CONCLUSION The insufficient degree
Page 36 and 37: especially treated as errors to cor
Page 38 and 39: introduce the target language cultu
Page 40 and 41: REFERENCES Birdsong, D. (2006). Age
Page 42 and 43: Studiums zu verschwinden. Diese Ten
Page 44 and 45: Wenn von Internalisierung der Facht
Page 46 and 47: Crnić-Grotić: Besonderheiten des
Page 48 and 49: dreidimensional» genannt, weil die
Page 50 and 51: Kommunikativen Ansatzes zur Vermitt
Page 52 and 53: judges. English for lawyers was stu
Page 54 and 55: merely an opportunity to discuss an
Page 56 and 57: Hall, D. & Hewings, A. (2000). Inno
Page 58 and 59: sociolinguistic character, they lar
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Page 62 and 63: …We have also boosted the growth
Page 64 and 65: 4. Kuna, Branko: Nove pojave u jezi
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Page 68 and 69: consuming. As stated above, the tea
Page 70 and 71: 2. MATERIAL AND METHODS The analysi
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Page 82 and 83: (2) While historical sociology (HS)
Page 84 and 85: expressed in the forms of first per
Page 86 and 87: (22) This article is the first in-d
Page 88 and 89: Further research could be carried o
Page 90 and 91: THE WORDLISTS PROJECT: AN EXAMPLE O
Page 93 and 94: CONTRIBUTORS’ BIO DATA Azamat AKB
Page 95: Jasna VUJCIĆ has an MA in Linguist
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