PREDICTIVE STRUCTURING IN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH ARTICLES

Abstract

This paper reports on a generic analysis of scientific research articles from the perspective of reader-writer interactivity in texts through predictive structuring (Tadros, 1981). The role of the Question - Answer pair was examined and the results indicate that it plays a significant part in organising both short stretches of text in addition to having a larger function in accounting for relationships between texts spanning sections of the article. The Q-A pair seems to be a generalisable feature which is likely to be part of the generic schematic knowledge possessed by experienced readers of scientific research articles. The study also indicated certain similarities as well as disciplinary variations between scientific journal article discourse and the discourse of economics textbooks.