A Contrastive Genre-Based Study of English and Indonesian RAIs in the History Discipline

Abstract

<p>Genre studies of Research Articles (RAs) have increased over the years. However, our review indicates that RA studies on RAs in the history discipline are still limited both to English and Indonesian languages. By identifying this gap, we are encouraged to analyze their rhetorical structures in the introduction section because this section plays an important role in publishing RAs in journals. For analyzing the rhetorical structure of both data sets, we employed the Create Research Spaces (CARS) model (Swales, 1990). The results showed that the rhetorical structures of English Research Article Introductions (RAIs) are similar to the CARS model, while the rhetorical structures of Indonesian RAIs in the present study do not conform to the model. This finding implies that Indonesian RAIs in the present study have different rhetorical structures from those found in English RAIs both in the present study and those in the CARS model. Besides, it implies that Indonesian authors in the History discipline meet challenges when they want to publish works in English journals.</p>