How to End an Introduction in a Computer Science Article? A Corpus-based Approach

Publisher： Rodopi

ISSN： 0921-5034

Source： Language and Computers, Vol.60, Iss.1, 2006-11, pp. : 227-241

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Abstract

Where corpus linguistics has offered new perspectives on linguistic analyses, it has provided a myriad of opportunities to academic discourse analysts also. Much work has been done on the academic (MICASE) and scientific discourse (Atkinson, 1993; Cooper, 1985; Peng 1987; Swales and Najjar, 1987; Thompson, 1993). With the advent of the computer revolution, information technology continues to steamroll into our lives. In this information society a few linguists have paid scholarly attention to the discourse of computer science (CS) (Anthony 1999, 2000, 2001 and Pestiguillo 1999). This paper discusses the patterns of the ending of the introductions to research articles in CS based on the structures of introductions presented by Swales (forthcoming) and Lewin et.al. (2001) with a special focus on outlining the structure of the text of a CS research article A corpus of authentic academic texts of 56 research articles published during 2003 in five different journals of IEEE was analyzed using Wordsmith tools. The study reveals that the need for this metadiscourse of outlining the structure of the paper in the CS introductions arises because of the variable number of the sections, ranging from 4-11, and follows a variable order according to the technical needs of the paper. The use of the word SECTION, found throughout the corpus, is discussed with reference to the lack of structural variation in Computer Science research papers.