Functional description of doctoral theses introductions in the disciplines of chemistry and linguistics

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to describe, through genre analysis guidelines, introductions of 34 chemistry and linguistics doctoral dissertations. These dissertations were submitted during 2003-2007 academic period to the Universidad Católica de Valparaiso, in Chile. According to this analysis, and from the exemplary configuration of a proposal for doctoral theses introductions, the communicative purpose of introducing a doctoral thesis research is to justify the investigation. A finding that stands out is the use of “rhetorical moves” not described in the literature, such as “definitions”, “procedure” or “impact”, as well as optional ones like “questions”, “procedure” or “originality”. At the rhetorical level, another relevant finding of this study is the distinction of two audiences: the primary audience and the secondary one, which refer to two different levels of targeted readers