Research article introductions and literature reviews in applied linguistics: A genre-based study

Following Swales’ (1981, 1990) pioneering work on the move structure of research article ‎introductions, the Create-a-Research-Space (CARS) model, a host of genre studies were carried out on different parts of the research article. However, research on the literature review ‎sections in the studies organized in the introduction, literature review, method, result and ‎discussion format remains extremely limited. Even lesser has been done to examine whether ‎the literature review and the introduction as separate sections belong to the same genre. Thus, this ‎study aimed at comparatively investigating research article introductions and literature reviews in ‎the field of applied linguistics, adopting Swales’ (2004) CARS model as the point of departure, ‎to reveal how these two sections, when stranded, are different or alike in terms of the utilized ‎rhetorical moves. The data comprised 30 articles, drawn from the most recent issues of 5 International Scientific Indexing journals. The findings of the analysis revealed that the two sections, besides bearing major similarities, perform slightly different tasks. The literature review section is more closely woven into the core of the research, more flexible in terms of the generic structure and thus less consistent with the strict CARS model. Despite these differences, the strong resemblance between the two sections implies that they belong to the same genre colony of academic research introductions. The CARS model was modified and presented in light of the findings of the study