The Study of Research Article Abstracts in the Applied Linguistic Discipline

Cek Turnitin

Abstract

Rhetorical studies on research article abstracts have been a growing concern of linguistic scholars, but what sentences to express communicative functions within abstracts have been very rarely found.In responding to this minor attention, this study intends to investigate abstract length, communicative functions, sentence forms to realize communicative functions, syntactic forms to realize communicative functions, and tense forms to realize communicative functions within abstracts. In this study, ten research article abstracts from the applied linguistic disciplines published in reputable journals were analyzed using some earlier frameworks. The results showed that the abstract section contains 160,9 words, with 6,7 sentences on average per research article. These sentences were distributed in five communicative functions, but of the five, only two of them are obligatory in research article abstracts. Other findings related to sentences to express these five communicative functions within the abstract section are described in the results and discussion sections. The findings of this study may significantly contribute to theoretical and practical bases in genre of research article abstracts.