A Discourse Analysis of Manuals of Style: The Specification of Function and Structure for Composition of Research Article Titles

Whereas globalization has wreaked havoc on many fields, it has largely been a positive force in the area of information dissemination and written communication. Inclusion of new writers and a better understanding of research writing have resulted. Many new members of academic discourse communities have turned to manuals of style for support and assistance. A thematic and corpus analysis was completed on the title composition sections of 15 manuals of style to determine the extent to which they have incorporated findings from genre analysis, English for specific purposes, and related fields. The findings suggest that manuals of style contain little discussion of the function and structure of titles, a dominant point in recent theory and research about titles. Terms such as nominal group and nominalization are unused. Instead manuals of style emphasize keywords, an older perspective on title composition. This finding suggests that manuals of style are not incorporating recent research on writing.