A cross-disciplinary analysis of rhetorical structure of dissertation abstracts

The teaching rhetorical structure of various academic genres has been recognized as a practical, pedagogical tool in both ESL and EFL academic settings. However, assigning a unitary structure for different fields of study might poses problems for novice writers. In this study, the rhetorical structure of 120 abstracts (ninety ‘masters’ theses and thirty ‘doctoral’ dissertations) from six disciplines were investigated. In this exploratory study, four rhetorical structures were found: IMRC/D, CARS, Mixed, and None (which means the texts lack any rhetorical structure). The conclusion is that nonnative speakers require more than grammatical knowledge at the clause level. They need to be familiarized with the discourse grammar with the functional tokens attached to it in order to be successful in their academic writing.