The thematic structure in research article abstracts: Variations across disciplines

Abstract

This study has investigated the thematic structure of RA abstracts published in business administration, applied linguistics, accounting, physics, chemistry, and computer science disciplines from the perspectives of topical, textual, and interpersonal themes. The results showed that the unmarked topical themes were the most prevalent types in the RA abstracts, while the interpersonal themes were the least frequent. Concerning the textual themes, the results revealed some disciplinary variations. For example, the computer science abstracts relied heavily on conjunctive adjuncts while applied linguistics abstracts made a sort of balance between the conjunctions and conjunctive adjuncts. Additionally, the results showed that the adversative type was the most commonly used in all disciplines except in computer science where the temporal type was the most frequent element, and the accounting abstracts have had both adversative and additive types with the same frequency.

Keywords

• thematic structure
• topical themes
• textual themes
• interpersonal themes
• ra abstract