4/19/25, 5:25 PM The schematic structure of literature reviews in doctoral theses of applied linguistics - ScienceDirect

English for Specific Purposes

Volume 25, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 30-55

The schematic structure of literature reviews

in doctoral theses of applied linguistics
Becky S.C. Kwan

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Abstract

In thesis manuals and writing programs, the notions of “introduction” and “literature
review” (LR) are often used interchangeably to refer to the beginning chapters of a thesis.
Samples of introductions from research articles and theses are sometimes employed to
illustrate the structure and other features of an LR, which suggests that the introduction and
the LR chapters belong to the same category of text. However, little work has been
undertaken to confirm whether this is the case. This study seeks to identify the rhetorical
structure of the LR chapter and compare it with the revised CARS model [Bunton, D. (2002).
Generic moves in Ph.D. thesis introductions. In J. Flowerdew (Ed.), Academic discourse (pp.
57–75). London: Pearson Education] that has been posited for thesis introductions. The
corpus examined is drawn from 20 doctoral theses produced by native English speaking
students of applied linguistics. The findings reveal that many of the LR chapters display an
Introduction–Body–Conclusion structure. Within the body part, the discussion is divided
into thematic sections, each of which displays recursive move structures that are similar to
those found in thesis introductions. Of three moves identified, Move 3 appears least
frequently. Although most of the steps in Bunton’s revised CARS model are present in the

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4/19/25, 5:25 PM The schematic structure of literature reviews in doctoral theses of applied linguistics - ScienceDirect

move structures, some new steps are also distinguished. The findings suggest that LRs and
introductions may not be structurally entirely the same.

Introduction

The past two decades have seen an increasing amount of research into various aspects of
the post-graduate thesis (e.g., Belcher, 1994, Bunton, 1998, Bunton, 1999, Bunton, 2002,
Dong, 1996, Dong, 1998, Dudley-Evans, 1999, Hocking, 2003, Ridley, 2000, Turner, 2003).
This increase has contributed significantly to our understanding of the genre and its
composing process. However, despite the volume of work that has been undertaken,
research on the literature review (LR) chapters in theses that are organized in the traditional
Introduction–Literature review–Methodology–Discussion1 (I(Lr)MRD) format remains
rather limited. This is surprising given that reviewing the literature is an indispensable and
notoriously difficult task in the writing of post-graduate theses (Cooley and Lewkowicz,
1995, Cooley and Lewkowicz, 1997, Meloy, 2002, Shaw, 1991), a view that is also shared by
novice researchers (see Flowerdew, 2000). One possible reason for the lack of attention to
this crucial part of the thesis is captured wittily and quite rightly by the remark of Swales
and Feak (2000) in their volume English in Today’s Research World:
The LR as part of a research paper, proposal, thesis, or dissertation is often thought of as
being a boring but necessary chore. Such LRs are often criticized but are rarely praised. After
all, one rarely hears comments such as “The most brilliant part of your thesis was the
literature review”! (Swales & Feak, 2000, p. 116)

The scarcity of research on LRs can also be attributed to their length, which is always a
central concern in thesis studies (Bunton, 2002). This work is an attempt to fill the research
gap, which aims to characterize the rhetorical movements in LR chapters in theses that are
organized in the ILrMRD format.

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Rhetorical purposes of LRs

A crucial starting point for a move analysis is to consider the purposes of the target genre,
which regulate its propositional contents, schematic pattern, and choice of register (Swales,
1990). To identify the move structure of a genre, the analyst needs to be aware of the
function of the text group and to determine how each move in the structure contributes to
the fulfillment of that function. As for the LR in a thesis, the main purpose is to justify the
value of the research, and to show why …

The study

This study seeks answers to the following questions:

1. Do LRs in ILrMRD theses exhibit a common rhetorical move structure, and if

they do, what is the prototypical structure? …

2. Are the elements in each of the moves obligatory or optional? …

3. Do the obligatory move elements appear in a fixed sequential order? …

4. Do LRs share the same move structure as that which has been found in
introductory chapters of ILrMRD theses, such as that in Bunton’s (2002)
model? …

Introductory texts and concluding texts

As mentioned earlier, introductory and concluding texts figure as two major analytical units
in the corpus, and thus their schematic patterns merit close investigation. However, as space
is limited, I confine my discussion to their functions and semantic features.

Twenty-six (89.66%) of the 29 chapters open with texts that are headed “Introduction”.
These texts are relatively short compared with the thematic sections. The shortest text is
only a few lines long, and the longest one occupies two …

Conclusion

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In this study I attempt a structural analysis of a group of LR texts drawn from 20 doctoral
theses that were written by a group of English native-speakers, and compare the findings
with those that are posited in Bunton’s revised CARS model for Ph.D. thesis introductions. It
is found that most of the LR texts are realized in more than one chapter, and that the
majority of the chapters display an Introduction–Body–Conclusion structure. The
introductory texts found in the LRs serve two possible …

Acknowledgments
I give special thanks to my colleague John Flowerdew for his comments on early drafts of
this article, and most importantly for allowing me to use the corpus of literature reviews
that he collected from the 20 contributors. I express my appreciation to Miss Ann Wong for
organizing, maintaining and coding the corpus. My thanks go also to Shin Gyonggu, Joyce
Bell, May Chan and in particular the two reviewers for their very insightful comments. Last
but not least, both John Flowerdew and I express …

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