Move Analysis of the Literature Review Chapters of Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations in Applied Linguistics
| Autor: | Li, Ming-Cheng, 李明政 |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2019 |
| Druh dokumentu: | 學位論文 ; thesis |
| Popis: | 107 Literature review has always been considered a highly complicated and indispensable work of academic writing. Studies have revealed that novice academic writers, especially thesis and dissertation writers, are most likely to encounter structural and organizational problems in undertaking their theses or dissertations (Blicblau, McManus, & Prince, 2009; Powers, 1994). Previous studies have suggested that chapters of literature review might have distinct move structures that are different from those in introduction chapters. However, the move structure of the literature review chapter has not obtained sufficient attention in EFL contexts, especially in Taiwan. Therefore, the present study intends to analyze the move structures of the literature review chapters of master’s theses and doctoral dissertations in applied linguistics completed in Taiwan. Through move analysis, the researcher investigates how the thesis and dissertation writers arrange the move structures in the literature review chapter. Two research questions were formulated: (1) What are move structures in the literature review chapters of the master’s theses and doctoral dissertations in applied linguistics completed in Taiwan? (2) What are the differences between the arrangements of the move structures in literature review chapters of the master’s theses and doctoral dissertations in applied linguistics completed in Taiwan? In the present study, two corpora of literature review chapters were formed by the researcher, and each set of corpus consisted of 20 literature review chapters completed in applied linguistics across Taiwan. To answer the research questions, move analysis was carried out to investigate the two sets of data based on Kwan’s (2006) move structure model for literature review chapter, and the data in the present study was examined according to the Introduction-Body-Conclusion structure of the literature review chapter, including introduction section, thematic sections, and conclusion sections. The results showed that in terms of the move structures of the introduction section of the literature review chapter, Move 3 was the most dominant move in both the theses and dissertations and single-move patterns were the major move patterns in this section. It is concluded that the introduction section of the literature review chapters serves to announce the research aims and processes. With regard to the move structures of the conclusion section, it was revealed that Move 2 was most frequently used in the theses, and Move 3 was found to be ranked highest in dissertations. The findings indicate that thesis writers tend to create their research niches while dissertation writers intend to occupy their research niches in the conclusion sections. With regard to the semantic section, the results showed that the overall frequency of Move 1 in the theses is nearly twice as that of Move 2, which indicated thesis writers might have a heavy reliance on Move 1, establishing the research territory, in the thematic section. In addition, the dissertation writers showed higher frequencies of strategies of Move 2, which might imply that the dissertation writers tend to employ more strategies to synthesize, indicating gaps and providing assertive or negational claims towards the reviewed literature. The findings of the current study should contribute to the understanding of the current research on the genre of the literature review chapters of theses and dissertations. A clearer guideline may be provided for instructors of EAP or advanced writing courses to question and accordingly revise their instructions to guide novice literature review writers to synthesize, paraphrase, and make critical statements in the process of literature review completion. It is hope that the novice writers could benefit from findings and conduct their writing practices more effectively to fulfill the convictions and expectations of their discourse communities. |
| Databáze: | Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations |
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