Discursive acts embedded in English RPs’ introductions of a non-Anglophone academic discourse

Driven from discourse analysis framework, this paper focuses on the discursive acts in introductory parts

of English research papers (RPs) by Turkish authors in the field of English Language Teaching (ELT) to

expand the discussion about the scientific rhetoric in non-Anglophone academic discourses. By following

qualitative paradigm, the rhetoric in manuscripts was elaborated by drawing on interview-based study of

2 referees and 5 editor/referees’ accounts of the issue and contrastive rhetoric analysis of two ELT

research paper (RP) corpora by Turkish researchers and Anglophone researchers. In this regard, the

accounts of referees and editor/referees and the chi-square values of the differences between two corpora

broadly related to raising issues regarding: i) the strength of introductions in accomplishing theoretical

research foundation and the reflection and argumentation in terms of evaluative perspectives, ii) the

research justification through the discussion of specific reasoning, and iii) the unity and connectedness

between/within paragraphs. These matters suggest that the acts noticed in opening sections of English

ELT manuscripts by non-Anglophone Turkish authors seem to function just indexing the previous works

done, and so the rhetoric involved in these acts is of little depth in succeeding situating the manuscript

into the relevant research domain.