Textual organization of articles: A move analysis of research articles in aerospace engineering

Since Swales' (1990) pioneer move analysis study, which analyzed the research article introductions, many have applied CARS model to different sections of articles from varying fields (i.e. natural sciences, social sciences, fundraising letters, and several other fields). The present study investigated the dominant move structures in full-length Aerospace Engineering Research Articles. For the ultimate aim of the study, a corpus of 8 articles from 4 core journals is collected. All the sentences are coded by using an adapted version of Kanoksilapatham's (2005) move structures for biochemistry research articles. The results of the present study showed that Aerospace Engineering research articles have a consistent move structure. The outcomes of this study can be implemented in the writing courses taught in aerospace engineering departments likewise by those who teach EAP/ESP. The findings also supply insights for future move analysis studies in different disciplines.