An analysis of rhetorical moves in abstracts for conference proceedings

• Main Author: Mohd Muzhafar Idrus
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: OCERINT International 2016
• Subjects: Abstracting; Conference proceedings
• Online Access: http://ddms.usim.edu.my:80/jspui/handle/123456789/12836
• Institution: Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia

An abstract plays a pivotal role because it represents the summary of the entire article. Therefore, it is the first thing that readers evaluate to determine if they should read the entire article. Hence, it is imperative for academics to provide an abstract that includes all essential rhetorical moves when writing an academic article. In lieu of this, the current study attempted to examine whether the abstracts provided in conference proceedings include the essential rhetorical moves and whether the moves are presented in the sequence according to the selected classification. The data for this study were collected using purposive sampling from 23 abstracts of empirical-based studies in nature from the selected conference. The abstracts were written in the English language and authored by academics in the field of language and education from higher institutions in various countries. Hyland’s (2000) five-moves classification of rhetorical moves was used as the coding in identifying the moves structure of the selected abstracts in this study. Other moves that emerged from the selected abstracts were added to Hyland’s (2000) classification. The moves structure data were analyzed using manifest content analysis while the sequence of moves data were analyzed using latent content analysis. The findings show that the majority of the abstract only partially contains the rhetorical moves as suggested by Hyland (2000) with a variety of moves sequence. Apart from Hyland’s (2000) five- moves, some authors included the theoretical aspect of their study in their abstracts. The implications of the findings were discussed within the context of professional development among higher institutions academics, particularly in academic abstract writing.