journal of linguistic studies

- 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:
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