APPLICABILITY AND VARIATION OF SWAVES' CARS MODEL TO APPLIED LINGUISTICS ARTICLE ABSTRACTS

Abstract

This study examines, from a diachronic-comparative perspective, the applicability and variation of the Create a Research Space (CARS) model to informative abstracts of empirical applied linguistics research articles (RAs) in English published in two high impact academic journals (TESOL Quarterly and Reading Research Quarterly). A pilot study of a smaller sample of 20 abstracts chosen from the 92-abstract corpus published in a twenty-year period (1981–2001) with a five-year interval between each year of publication showed that CARS was applicable to only part of the data and that there were also other rhetorical categories not captured by this framework. The move-step analysis of the 92-abstract corpus indicated that ‘Announcing present research’, within the move ‘Occupying the niche’, was the most commonly used step and with the most variation over time. As regards the categories not captured by CARS, it was found that the step ‘Drawing conclusions’, within the move ‘Discussing the research’, was employed in almost half of the abstracts of the corpus and it also varied in the years analyzed. The moves ‘Occupying the niche’ and the sections not captured by CARS, i.e., ‘Describing the methodology’, ‘Summarizing the results’, and ‘Discussing the research’, were the most commonly used and with most variation in the corpus over time. These results suggest that most authors from both journals announce the present research and to inform about the rest of the RA, they include the rhetorical sections ‘Describing the methodology’, ‘Summarizing the results’, and ‘Discussing the research’.