University of Tehran Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures SFL and ESP Genre Analysis of English Research Articles in Iranian and English-American Medical Journals: A Contrastive Study by Nasrin Sayfouri Supervisor Abbas Ali Rezaee, PhD A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Studies Office in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Teaching English as a Foreign Language September 2010 University of Tehran Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures SFL and ESP Genre Analysis of English Research Articles in Iranian and English-American Medical Journals: A Contrastive Study by Nasrin Sayfouri Supervisor Abbas Ali Rezaee, PhD Readers Seyyed Mohammad Alavi, PhD Reza Ghafar Samar, PhD A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Studies Office in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Teaching English as a Foreign Language September 2010 © Copyright by Nasrin Sayfouri 2010 All Rights Reserved 3 University of Tehran Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures English Department We, the committee members, hereby recommend that this dissertation entitled SFL and ESP Genre Analysis of English Research Articles In Iranian and English-American Medical Journals: A Contrastive Study by Nasrin Sayfouri be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Teaching English as a Foreign Language. Abbas Ali Rezaee, PhD. (Supervisor) ------------------------------------------------------------ Seyyed Mohamad Alavi, PhD. (Reader) --------------------------------------------------------- Reza Ghafar Samar, PhD. (Reader) -------------------------------------------------------------- Amir Houshang Kaviany, PhD. (External Examiner) ------------------------------------------ Mahmoud Reza Atai, PhD. (External Examiner). ----------------------------------------------- Davoud Borzabadi Farahani, PhD. (Internal Examiner) --------------------------------------- September 2010 To my parents, my husband, my son, and my daughter-in-law i ABSTRACT Literature in the area of contrastive genre analysis shows that Iranian medical research articles (RAs) in English have not been scrutinized to detect the possible peculiarities of their rhetorical features. On the other hand, the probable rhetorical differences between the articles published in internationally-recognized journals and those published in other journals have not been studied regarding either the informational units/Moves used or the types of the ideational grammatical metaphor (GM) employed. Being related to the problems of Iranian medical professionals in writing the Introduction and the Discussion sections of medical RAs in English, the present study was carried out in two phases. In the ESP Move analysis phase, the above-mentioned two sections of three groups of 32 randomly selected articles from ISI English-American (E-A), ISI Iranian, and non-ISI Iranian medical journals were compared in terms of the organization of Moves/Sub-moves used based on Nwogu s (1997) model. In the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) phase, through adopting Halliday s (1998) model of types of grammatical metaphor (GM) in scientific discourse, the ideational GM types employed by the ISI E-A articles in three Sub-moves of the Discussion sections were compared with the same GM types used by ISI Iranian ones in the same sections. The analytic results of Move analysis phase revealed that the two groups of Iranian articles employed significantly fewer number of Sub-moves 1.2 (Reference to main research problems), 2.2 (Reference to limitations of previous research), and 3.2 (Reference to main research procedures) in their Introduction sections compared to E-A articles. In the SFL genre analysis phase, although Iranian articles were shown to use significantly fewer proportions of ideational GM in general as well as the incongruent forms of qualities compared to E-A ones, the two groups employed the GM types with a similar pattern of ii ranking order as well as similar proportions of nominalization. Other results emerging synthetically during text analysis revealed that lack of metadiscourse markers and problems of paragraph development in a considerable number of Iranian articles could impair intelligibility during Move analysis. These findings as well as others presented in the study can be exploited for providing medical professionals with consciousness- raising educational activities regarding RA writing as well as evaluating medical RAs. Some recommendations have also been suggested which can facilitate and objectify the general process of journal/article evaluation. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is very hard to name all those who played particular roles in the creation of this dissertation. However, I always keep in mind all these people with much gratitude. First of all, I should thank God who listened to my desire of learning and helped me fulfill my aspirations through providing me with the right people and the right opportunities. I am enormously indebted to my supervisor, Dr. Rezaee, who patiently offered me years of generous guidance, intellectual nudge and strong support, especially in those tough times when I felt lost. I will also remember the emotional relief he provided for me through his encouraging emails during those months of continuous hard work when I was away from home. My hearty thanks should go to Dr. Alavi who both as my first reader and the facilitator of my trip to Sydney as the then Head of the Department played a role in improving the scientific quality of this dissertation. I also thank my second reader, Dr. Ghafar Samar, for his valuable comments and corrections. Carrying out the second phase of this study, the SFL analysis of the medical texts would not be possible without months of supervision of Professor J. R. Martin, the Head of the Department of Linguistics at The University of Sydney. He heedfully assisted me during the required red tapes of being accepted as a visiting scholar and, subsequently, guided me efficiently during acquiring the theories of SFL as well as the techniques of analyzing the grammatical metaphors in scientific texts. I do appreciate his patience and cooperation in providing equal opportunities for me as the other PhD students of their department. iv I am much grateful to Professors Halliday and Hasan who kindly provided for me the honor of enjoying their hospitality as well as several hours of discussion on the intricacies and subtleties of grammatical metaphor in scientific discourse. They taught me that the greatness of the great scholars comes with their sincere, unbiased, profound, and ceaseless care and dedication for the development of knowledge. I extend my gratitude to Professor John Swales who commented on the sources used in the earlier draft of the ESP section of this study and kindly sent me the related chapter of the manuscript version of his 2004 book. I m deeply indebted to my husband, Dr. Bahram Delgoshaei, for his moral support and insightful guidance in the completion of my dissertation. I should also thank my friends and colleagues, Mrs. Dehnad and Mrs. Nasser who, as the raters of the inter-rater reliability of Move-Sub-move identification of the ESP phase of the study, played a crucial role in the completion of this dissertation. I owe much gratitude to my other colleagues at Iran University of Medical Sciences, Mr. Hatami and Miss. Bagherzadeh for their understanding, patience, cooperation, and professional support during the previous two years especially during the period when I was involved with my trip abroad. Last, but not least, I am deeply indebted to my parents for their strong emotional support and, finally, to my son and my daughter-in-law who patiently endured and helped an always-busy mother. v Table of Contents Dedication ............................................................................................................................ i Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iv Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... vi List of Tables ...................................................................................................................... xi List of Figures .................................................................................................................. xiii List of Abbreviations ........................................................................................................ xiv Chapter One: Introduction 1.1. Overview ...................................................................................................................... 2 1.2. Statement of the Problem ............................................................................................. 7 1.3. Purpose of the Study .................................................................................................... 9 1.3.1. The Two Phases of the Study .............................................................................. 10 1.4. Significance of the Study ........................................................................................... 10 1.5. Research Questions and Hypotheses .......................................................................... 12 1.5.1. Research Questions. ............................................................................................ 12 1.5.1.1. The Analytic Approach to ESP Analysis ...................................................... 12 1.5.1.2. The Synthetic Approach to ESP Analysis .................................................... 13 1.5.1.3. The Analytic Approach to SFL Analysis ...................................................... 14 1.5.1.4. The Synthetic Approach to SFL Analysis .................................................... 14 1.5.2. Null Hypotheses. ................................................................................................. 14 1.5.2.1. Analytic ESP Analysis of the Articles ......................................................... 14 1.5.2.2. Analytic SFL Analysis of the Articles .......................................................... 15 1.6. Definition of Key Terms ............................................................................................ 16 1.7. Limitations and Delimitations .................................................................................... 17 1.9. Organization of the Dissertation ................................................................................ 19 Chapter Two: Review of Literature 2.1. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 21 2.2. Theoretical Background ............................................................................................. 22 2.2.1. The Development of Genre Theory ..................................................................... 22 vi