Thematzation Strategies in the Generic Moves of Research Article Introductions

Despite the heterogeneity of ideas regarding the definitions of genre, there are also common instances shared among scholars interested in particular aspects of the notion. swales (1990) andbhatia (1993) are primarily interested in the sociological and psychological aspects of genre's functioning and construction, respectively .. swales analyzes the genre of 'article introductioninto four generic moves on the basis of the communicative intentions they serve, and bhatia investigates the tactical aspects of their construction. the present paper, is an attempt to study thepatterns of thematic development-based on danes( 1974) proposed pattems- in such generic moves. for this purpose, 12 academic papers were analyzed for their constituent generic move structures,with respect to the thematic choices and progression inside these moves. the results indicated that each move has characteristic patterns of thematic selection and progression, which must bemotivated by the global discourse topic and the communicative intention of these moves, as moves of dissimilar communicative intentions had characteristic patterns of thematic selections. in the light of the result of the experiment conducted on the teachability of generic moves, it is believed that the present study can have insightful implications for writing and reading pedagogy.