“For brevity, Fig. 5 only presents the results of …”: Visual-Textual Moves of Electronic Engineering Research Articles by Chinese and Native English Speaking Writers

Abstract

Abstract Visuals are essential components in achieving the communicative purpose of research articles (RAs). Besides, the fact that electronic engineering RAs (EERAs) contain a large number of visuals makes it worth investigating these essential components and their rhetorical functions. By adopting the multimodal move analysis framework of Moghaddasi et al. (2019), the present study explored visuals’ rhetorical functions through examination of the visual-textual moves (VTMs) in 24 EERAs composed by Chinese and Native English speaking writers. Comparisons of the visuals and VTMs in the two corpora were carried out for similarities and variations between the two writer groups. The findings showed that first, visuals in the Introduction (I) and the Methods (M) sections demonstrated mainly ontological function, while those in the Results and Discussion (RD) section played more of epistemological and argument functions. Secondly, more similarities, except for some subtle variations, were found between the two writer groups in terms of the employment of VTMs. The findings of VTMs, as well as their similarities and variations between Chinese and native English speaking writers, not only broaden RA genre knowledge for EE researchers and genre practitioners, but also give insights into academic writing instruction and material design for ESP and EAP practitioners.