Rhetorical Structure of Marketing Research Articles for Academic Writing

Abstract

Genre-based research has provided valuable insights into the rhetorical structure of research articles in various disciplines. While previous investigations primarily focused on the analyses of individual sections of research articles (e.g., abstracts, introductions, methods, results, and discussions), few studies have investigated research articles in their entirety. Attempting to fill this gap, this study examined the complete rhetorical structure of 30 research articles published in three high-impact marketing journals in 2011. The authors adapted two research instruments after Kanoksilapatham’s (2005) coding scheme for biochemistry research articles and used the modified scheme to analyze the corpus of approximately 275,000 words. Findings revealed a total of 9,266 move instances and a rhetorical structure comprising 17 different categories of rhetorical moves, out of which eight moves were found to be obligatory, seven moves conventional and two moves optional. Each move type could be realized by a series of steps ranging from two to seven. The findings regarding the rhetorical structure of marketing research articles contribute to genre research and provide input for academic writing courses as well as inform academic writing instructors of the teaching of reading and writing of research articles.