Combining rhetorical move analysis with multi-dimensional analysis: Research writing across disciplines.

Abstract

We carry out comprehensive form – function mapping in Introduction-Methods-Results -Discussion/Conclusion – structured research articles across 30 academic disciplines by merging move analysis (revealing rhetorical structure) and multi-dimensional (MD) analysis (modeling patterns of linguistic variation). These two analytic paradigms converge to map the communicative functions of text segments with patterns of functional linguistic variation, but the juxtaposition of these two approaches requires adaptations to the traditional MD methodology. The primary purpose of this chapter is to provide a detailed account of the methodological complexities of combining MD analysis and move analysis. We briefly present the results of the MD analysis, acknowledging that further methodological adjustments may be needed to arrive at an optimal multi-dimensional description of moves.