English Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Research Articles: Move and Phrase Frames in the Introduction Sections

Abstract

While many previously published studies have investigated the moves, steps and their structure of research article (RA) sections in various academic fields, such studies are rare in the discipline of Dentistry. Besides, prior research has been conducted on phrase frames of RAs in some fields, but phrase frames in Dentistry RAs have received scant attention. Hence, the current study aims to explore the rhetorical structure and phrase frames of English RA Introduction sections in the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (OMS) sub-discipline of Dentistry. A total of 30 articles from 3 renowned journals were collected and their Introductions were analyzed based on the frameworks of Kanoksilapatham (2005) for the move structure and Gray and Biber (2013) and Simpson-Vlach and Ellis (2010) for phrase frames, respectively. The results showed that the OMS Introductions exhibit 3 moves, i.e., Move 1: Announcing the importance of the study, Move 2: Preparing for the present study, and Move 3: Introducing the present study, and 3 new steps that illustrated the disciplinary features of Dentistry. The study also found 46 phrase frames in the structural and functional categories. These findings provide insights about the two significant rhetorical features of OMS RA Introduction sections and serve as useful resources in the English for Dentistry Purposes (EDP) teaching, learning, and research publication.