Genre based analysis of catalitic chemistry research articles: Rhetorical structure of introductions and abstracts

The purpose of the study was to analyse the rhetorical structure of research article introductions and abstracts in order to draw conclusions about the characteristics of articles in catalytic chemistry discipline. Furthermore, the aim was to analyse the appropriateness of a less conversant researcher, the first attempts of a PhD student, in academic writing. The abstracts were investigated according to Bhatia's four move model (purpose — method — results — conclusions), while Swales' framework — the three move (establishing a territory, establishing a niche, occupying a niche) CARS model — was applied to introductions. The purpose move is missing from catalytic chemistry research articles, while the structure of introduction tends to follow Swales' CARS model. However, the structure of my abstract and introduction did not match the characteristics of the studied corpus. The results of this study show how we can foretell or prove the origin of a discipline with the tools of linguistic analysis. Another point of this study is to give a guideline to university students how to write research article abstracts and introductions efficiently.