A Comparison Between Malay and English Research Article Discussions

Abstract

This study investigated the rhetorical organization of Malay and English research article discussions. A move analysis was carried out for the two sets of data of the present study based on a modified version of Peacock’s model for the discussion section. For this purpose, a total of 40 research article discussions restricted to empirical studies (20 from each corpus) were randomly selected from journals in the field of education. Results show that Malay discussions are more context dependent while English discussions are more context independent and standalone. In addition, compared with its English-language counterparts, the fit between Peacock’s model and Malay discussions is partial. This phenomenon may be due to the preference for rhetorical concepts and values in the local writing community. The findings have pedagogical implications in an English for Academic Purposes classroom.