A contrastive genre-based study: English and Malay

Abstract

This paper reports on a contrastive genre-based study comparing the employment of communicative purposes (moves) and rhetorical strategies (steps) between Malay and English research articlediscussions in using the move-structure models proposed by Holmes (1997). The focus is on researcharticle discussions in the field of humanities and social sciences. Results show that both sets ofdiscussions emphasize Move 2 (evaluating the findings). Overall, article discussions in both languagesshow the presence of the three moves (introductory, evaluation and conclusion) although Move 1 andMove 3 are under-represented in Malay discussions. The rhetorical-step model of English discussionsthat emerged in the present study (see Table 1) will be worth exploring with language instructors andESL (English as second language) students (Malay ESL students in particular) in EAP classrooms