Rhetorical move structures, hedges and boosters, and evaluative that constructions in national and international research articles written in English in applied linguistics : a study of discussion section

Name: Wichanon Phongjit

keyword: Discussion sections

; Rhetorical moves

; Hedges

; Boosters

; Evaluative ‘that’ constructions

Abstract: Knowledge of rhetorical move structures, metadiscourse, and evaluative ‘that’ constructions is vital for academic researchers. They should know how to organize moves to structure their writing and how to convince readers of their claims. This study intends to identify the rhetorical move structures in the discussion sections of applied linguistics research articles. The data was gathered from 80 research articles written in English and published in international and Thai journals. The rhetorical moves from the discussion sections were analyzed and compared between the international and Thai journals. The identified discussion moves were further analyzed in terms of metadiscourse (hedges and boosters), and evaluative ‘that’ constructions. The results revealed that authors in both international journals and Thai journals employed the same proportion of rhetorical moves. The most frequent moves were Move 2: Reporting the results and Move 4: Commenting on the results. With regards to hedges, the results showed that the use of hedge devices was different between international and Thai journal articles. In fact, the international journal writers tended to use hedge devices in Move 4: Commenting on the results more often than Thai journal writers. For boosters, similarities were found in the use of modal auxiliary verbs and epistemic lexical adjectives / adverbs. The study revealed that boosters were found in all rhetorical discussion section moves. As for the occurrences of evaluative ‘that’ constructions found in each rhetorical move, both the Thai journal writers and international journal writers tended to use evaluative ‘that’ constructions in all rhetorical moves. As for the sub-types of evaluative ‘that’ constructions, the Thai and international journal articles had different numbers of occurrences. For he evaluative ‘that’ sources, abstract sources were more often used by the international journal writers. The international journal writers used evaluative ‘that’ stance more often than the Thai journal writers in Move 4: Commenting on the results. As for the expressions used in ‘that’ clauses, controlled verbs had the most frequent occurrences. Also, the research act was the most frequently used in all rhetorical discussion moves. The findings provided the frequencies of occurrences of the discussion section moves, the occurrences of hedges and boosters, the evaluative ‘that’ constructions, e.g., contents of ‘that’ clauses, noun and adjective predicates, and controlled verbs of ‘that’ clauses. The findings from the textual analysis might help novice EFL scholars write discussions which comply with international conventions and norms by focusing on writing organization and a few linguistic features as described in this study.

Thammasat University. Thammasat University Library

Address: BANGKOK

Email: preserv@tu.ac.th

Name: Chanika Gampper

Role: advisor

Created: 2023

Modified: 2025-11-21

Issued: 2025-11-21

วิทยานิพนธ์/Thesis

application/pdf

DOI: 10.14457/TU.the.2022.1674

eng

DegreeName: Doctor of Philosophy

Level: Doctoral Degree

Descipline: English Language Teaching

Grantor: Thammasat University

©copyrights Thammasat University

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