A Critical Analysis of Structuralist Variations in Academic Writing

Abstract

This paper investigated the generic features of conclusion
sections in M Phil theses written by the University students of Pakistan.
The corpus constituted 60 M Phil theses from Science and technology
(ST) and Humanities and Social sciences (HSS) disciplines. Models
presented by Yang and Allison (2003) and Bunton (2005) were used as
guiding principles. Findings revealed that most of the conclusion
sections exhibited four- move structure: consolidation of research space
as an obligatory move, introductory restatement, practical implication
and future research as optional moves. Difference was observed in the
occurrence of Move 4 (future research) in ST conclusions of this study
(19.9%) and Bunton’s (80%) inferring that Pakistani students seemed
unaware of the importance of relating their findings with the outer
world. Move-5 (concluding restatement in Bunton’s model) was not
found in Pakistani corpus suggesting the variability in written discourse
specific to context. The study may serve as a useful material from
pedagogical perspective for the students to get familiarized with the
generic features of concluding chapters