Rhetorical Moves of Abstracts Written by TEFL Students and Molecular Biology Graduate Students- A Comparative Study

The aim of the present study was to carry out an analysis of research thesis abstracts written by graduate students of two different disciplines; TEFL and molecular biology, Tehran University. Having presented a brief description of some theoretical concepts related to move analysis, the present study carries out a rhetorical move analysis on 48 abstracts randomly selected from among a pool of 93; 24 abstracts in TEFL and 24 belonging to the students of molecular biology. The analysis was aimed at comparatively investigating whether both the generic patterns of organizations found in abstracts coincide with Bhatia’s (1993) abstract move pattern, and also ascertaining whether or not there are significant differences in employing the moves pattern. Findings of the study indicated that the abstracts in both disciplinary groups are found to exhibit the use of similar generic structure with the four moves to indicate the communicative purposes of the abstracts in the perspective of Bhatia’s (1993) move structure. However some differences were observed in respect with certain moves.