Rhetorical moves in introduction chapter of traditional and article-based doctoral theses

Thesis writing is a requirement for students to complete in order to fulfill a postgraduate degree. Therefore, knowledge of the rhetorical structure (moves and steps) of a thesis is crucial for the successful completion. However, PhD students often find writing a thesis, especially the Introduction chapter, to be the most difficult task. To date, the literature lacks studies on the rhetorical moves and steps, as well as their linguistic realizations, in the introduction chapters of PhD theses. Moreover, none of the previous studies have investigated the rhetorical moves and steps, and linguistic realizations in the introduction chapters of Article-based PhD theses. Thus, this research aimed to investigate the rhetorical moves of Introduction chapters in two different types of theses: traditional and Article-based theses, and to compare their linguistic realizations. To this end, a total of 40 PhD theses were collected: 20 traditional, and 20 Article-based theses. The study employed a mixed method approach of qualitative and quantitative analysis, and the corpus was analyzed based on an adapted framework which is based on Bunton’s (2002) model of rhetorical moves and steps in PhD thesis introductions. The findings of the study indicated that both types of the theses had three obligatory moves: Move 1 (Establishing a territory), Move 2 (Establishing a niche), and Move 3 (Occupying the niche), each with a frequency of 100%. In addition, the findings also exhibited some noteworthy similarities and differences in terms of the steps of the moves. Notably, a newly identified step, ‘synopsis of the research paper’, was only found in the Article-based introductions. Moreover, the findings revealed that there were three move patterns shared by twenty traditional and twenty Article-based theses Introductions: cyclical (44.2% and 42.0% respectively), linear (40.0% and 38.7%), and nonlinear (15.8% and 19.3%). In terms of the patterns of steps in each move, the findings showed that in both sets of the theses, the steps in Move 1 and Move 3 were more commonly observed in a nonlinear pattern. For the patterns of steps in Move 2, the nonlinear pattern was the prominent pattern observed in traditional theses, while the linear pattern was the common pattern of use in Article-based theses. Furthermore, there were variations in the use of the dominant linguistic realizations in both types of the theses. For example, in the traditional thesis, the lexical signal ‘important role(s)’ was the dominant linguistic realization in Move 1 Step 1 (claiming centrality), while in Article-based theses, ‘leading cause(s) of’ was frequently used in this step. Additionally, there were more variations in the use of the dominant linguistic realizations in the steps of Move 2 and Move 3 in traditional and Article-based theses.These results can provide informed input on the structures and linguistic realizations of the two types of theses to writing instructors and curriculum writers.

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