Medical Research Article Introductions in Persian and English Contexts: Rhetorical and Metadiscoursal Differences

Medical discourse has recently attracted much scholarly attention. However, few studies have concentrated on both the overall rhetorical structure of the research article (RA) and the specific lexicogrammatical features of the texts, particularly English-Persian contrastive studies on medical RAs. Relying on Nwogu’s (1997) framework, the present study aimed at providing a macroanalysis of the Introduction sections of 3 groups of texts, namely medical RAs written and published in international English journals, those written in English by Iranian writers and published in Iran, and those written and published in Persian in Iran. Results of the quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed that the Introduction sections of the 3 groups are similar regarding their move frequency and occurrence, but the realization of these 3 moves in terms of metadiscourse markers was radically different in these 2 languages, although the identified metadiscourse markers were not move-specific. Findings could be of help to Iranian scholars active in publishing English journals.