Abstracts in Iranian dental journals: A linguistic analysis

This study investigated the rhetorical move structure of the dental sciences research article abstract (RAA) genre using Swales’ (2004) model of move analysis, CARS (Create a Research Space), to find the frequency of rhetorical moves and steps in RAAs of the selected journals and also to examine the association between the frequency of moves and steps in the RAAs. To this end, 251 abstracts from articles published in 2018, 2019, and 2020 in four Iranian PubMed-indexed dentistry journals were selected and examined. The frequencies were counted and compared using the Chi Square statistic. The findings revealed that all of the abstracts included M3S4 and M3S5, and all but only one, included M3S1. Yet, M3S2 and M3S7 had not been used in the abstracts whatsoever, and M1S3 had been employed only once. It was also found that the RAAs in the Journal of Dentistry and the Dental Research Journal used the steps considerably more frequently than the RAAs in the Journal of Dental Research and Frontiers in Dentistry. The findings of this study can provide EAP instructors with practical insights into the needs and wants of dental students, and also serve as a complement to the guidelines for academic writing for dental researchers to produce more received RAAs.