April 2010 Volume 6 Issue 1
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Title
A Genre-based Study of Medical Research Article Introductions:
A Contrastive Analysis Between Chinese and English

Authors
Yan Zhang & Jiyue Hu
English Department, Second Military Medical University, Shanghai, China

Biodata
Yan Zhang is a Lecturer in the Department of Foreign Languages, Second Military Medical University, China. She has taught and published in English for Medical Purposes (EMP). Her areas of long-term research interest include medical academic reading and writing. wmt1188@hotmail.com

Jiyue Hu is a full Professor of English and Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages, Second Military Medical University, China. She has taught and published extensively in Applied Linguistics. wmt88@sina.com

Abstract
This study examines the genre of research article introductions across languages, with the aim to explore different rhetorical structures and linguistic features in Chinese and English medical research article introductions (RAIs). The corpus for this study consists of forty research article introductions selected from Chinese and English academic medical journals. Swales’ CARS model is employed for the analysis, which is followed by a discussion of the results from macro-structural and micro-linguistic perspectives, where significant differences between the corpora are identified. Some tentative explanations based on social and cultural perspectives are given for the different rhetorical structures in the two corpora. This study addresses variations in academic discourse between English and Chinese and reveals that academic writing exhibits culture-specific characteristics.

Key Words: genre; research article introduction; contrastive rhetoric; CARS model