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February 3, 2022
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July 13, 2022
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August 9, 2022
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Abstract

Previous studies have provided exciting findings for language variations in theses and dissertations. However, not many studies have revealed the rhetorical analysis of the undergraduate abstracts. This study investigated the rhetorical structure of undergraduate thesis abstracts to reveal the constructions of the genre by novice writers. It further explored the variations between two groups of writers, students with the native language of English and Indonesian students writing in English. The aim was to present the commonalities and differences within the genre and finally conclude the genre’s conventions. The corpus for this study consisted of 180 undergraduate thesis abstracts from 12 universities in the United States, New Zealand, and Indonesia from Computer Science. The findings of this study revealed certain conventions consisting of rhetorical moves and rhetorical strategies used to perform the rhetorical moves. Differences between native writers of English and non-native writers of English included the use of lexical items and lexico-grammatical constructions in presenting arguments and evidence. The study concluded that socio-cultural factors, such as institutional guidelines for thesis writing and students’ first language, may contribute to the genre's variations.

Keywords

thesis abstract rhetorical construction moves and steps Computer Science

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Author Biography

Risa Rumentha Simanjuntak, English Department, Faculty of Humanities, Bina Nusantara University, Indonesia 11480

Dr. Simanjuntak earned her Doctorate in Applied Linguistics from Atma Jaya University, Indonesia. She holds a double masters in Education Management from University of Leeds-England and Applied Linguistics from University of Melbourne- Australia. She is currently the Research Coordinator in English Department at Bina Nusantara University, Indonesia. She has numerous publications in reputable international journals and international conference proceedings. Her research interests are computational linguistics, discourse analysis, and corpus-based language education.

How to Cite
Simanjuntak, R. R. (2022). Revealing the rhetorical moves and linguistic patterns in discipline-related undergraduate thesis. JOALL (Journal of Applied Linguistics and Literature), 7(2), 345–361. https://doi.org/10.33369/joall.v7i2.20542
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