Rhetorical Functions in English Review Articles’ Conclusions

Genre analysis studies have refined our understanding of the rhetorical organization of scientific articles. The present paper reports on a study which investigated the rhetorical organization of the conclusion section of English conceptual review articles in linguistics and applied linguistics fields. Drawing on a move-based genre analysis approach, the study was based on a corpus of more than 500 English conceptual review articles. The analysis involved detecting the generic moves and sub-moves that writers use to achieve communicative purposes. The results showed that first, conclusions in English conceptual review articles differ from conclusions in research papers in terms of primary communicative purposes. Second, conclusions of review articles contain a set five moves, including 1) territory, 2) purpose, 3) structure, 4) conclusion, and 5) suggestion. Third, conclusions of review articles feature a cyclic pattern in the last two moves, as the writer reports main findings of prior research, interprets them, relates them to educational practice, and recommends further research based on what is felt most necessary. Last but not least, unlike research papers conclusions, review articles conclusions contain ‘suggestion’ as a core feature of their rhetorical organization. The results of the study benefit both theoreticians and practitioners.