| Despite the heterogeneity of ideas regarding the definitions of
genre, there are also common instances shared among scholars
interested in particular aspects of the notion. Swales (1990) and
Bhatia (1993) are primarily interested in the sociological and
psychological aspects of genre's functioning and construction,
respectively.. Swales analyzes the genre of 'article introduction',
into four generic moves on the basis of the communicative
intentions they serve, and Bhatia investigates the tactical aspects
of their construction. The present paper, is an attempt to study the
patterns of thematic development-based on Daneš(1974) proposed
patterns- in such generic moves. For this purpose, 12 academic
papers were analyzed for their constituent generic move structures,
with respect to the thematic choices and progression inside these
moves. The results indicated that each move has characteristic
patterns of thematic selection and progression, which must be
motivated by the global discourse topic and the communicative
intention of these moves, as moves of dissimilar communicative
intentions had characteristic patterns of thematic selections. In the
light of the result of the experiment conducted on the teachability
of generic moves, it is believed that the present study can have
insightful implications for writing and reading pedagogy. |