REALIZATION OF RHETORICAL MOVES AND VERB TENSE VARIATION IN TWO SUBDISCIPLINES OF COMPUTER SCIENCES: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND ARCHITECTURE

A research article abstract is the first part a reader examines to decide to keep reading the article, because it is a concise summary of the research article. The present study was aimed at exploring the rhetorical moves and the verb tense of each move of abstracts in the fields of Artificial Intelligence and Architecture: two influential subfields in Computer Sciences. Thirty two abstracts from four journals published in 2013 were examined. Hyland’s (2000) five-rhetorical move model was chosen as the analytical framework for this purpose. The findings indicated that there were four conventional moves and one optional move in abstracts in both related disciplines. In terms of verb tense, present tense is the preferred tense in both subdisciplines. The findings also showed no significant disciplinary variation. The implications are discussed in light of the results of the study.