Abstract

Writing a good discussion section is crucial as how the section is written contributes to the acceptance of a research article (RA) by the reader. Through a move structure model for the Discussion section of RAs and the taxonomies of hedges and boosters, the study examines communicative strategies, namely move structures (move and step) as well as the metadiscoursal devices (hedges and boosters) used by Tourism and Pharmacology authors to discuss research results in Tourism and Pharmacology RA discussions. Thus, in the current study, the Discussion sections of 20 Tourism RAs and 20 Pharmacology RAs were analysed using a mixed method comprising both the qualitative and quantitative analyses. In the qualitative method, a content analysis was used to identify the communicative strategies in terms of rhetorical ‘moves’ and ‘steps’ as well as hedges and boosters employed in the selected RA discussions. In addition, a semi-structured interview was conducted with specialist informants to obtain further insight for the present findings. On the other hand, in the quantitative method, data was quantified in terms of the number of sentences employing the moves/steps and the frequencies of hedges and boosters found in the corpora. The findings show that authors of Tourism and Pharmacology RAs tend to report and comment on their research findings in a reciprocally connected manner. However, a major difference was observed in terms of how the findings were commented on. Besides, both the Tourism and Pharmacology authors were also found to utilise hedges more frequently than boosters to avoid overclaiming their results. The findings of this study can help future academic authors and students to employ effective communicative strategies to discuss research results along with the appropriate use of hedges and boosters.