Differences in Research Abstracts written in Arabic, French, and English

Authors

  • Abdelmajid Bouziane Faculty of Letters and Humanities Ben M’Sik, Hassan II University of Casablanca https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4138-2450
  • Fatima Ezzahra Metkal

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.33919/esnbu.20.2.4

Keywords:

differences, abstracts, Arabic, French, English

Abstract

The proliferation of publications, mainly the digital ones, makes it necessary to write well-structured abstracts which help readers gauge the relevance of articles and thus attract a wider readership. This article investigates whether abstracts written in three languages, namely Arabic, French and English, follow the same patterns within or across languages. It compares 112 abstracts in the areas of (applied) linguistics. The English abstracts include 36 research article (RA) abstracts from an Arab journal mostly written by non-natives and 10 by native speakers from British universities. Those produced in French are 36 divided into two sets, 23 from North African journals and the remaining 13 from French journals. The Arabic abstracts consist of 30 abstracts, 15 from North African journals mainly from Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco and the other 15 from the Middle East with a focus on Qatari and Saudi texts. Results emanating from the frequency of moves show that the abstracts written in English by natives and non-natives and those produced in Arabic by Middle Eastern writers show conformity with the existing conventions of abstract writing in English. However, those from North Africa, be they Arabic or French, do not share any specific patterns which can be attributed to the language in which they are written. Further research is needed to check whether abstract writing is part of the academic writing curriculum in these two latter languages.

Author Biographies

Abdelmajid Bouziane, Faculty of Letters and Humanities Ben M’Sik, Hassan II University of Casablanca

Abdelmajid Bouziane is a professor of education at Hassan II University of Casablanca, Morocco. He has served as a project manager and participant in different national and international projects related to education. He has published widely in the areas of teaching English as a foreign language, ICT, and education in general. He serves as a peer reviewer for some international journals. His areas of interest are: TEFL, ICT in education, research methods, teachers’ associations, and language policy. He has supervised several master and doctorate theses.

Fatima Ezzahra Metkal

Fatima Ezzahra Metkal is a teacher of English in high school. She earned a master’s degree in Moroccan American Studies from the Faculty of Letters and Humanities Ben M’Sik, Casablanca

References

Alotaibi, H. (2013). Research Article Abstracts and Introductions: A Comparative Genre-Based Study of Arabic and English in the Fields of Educational Psychology and Sociology. [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Texas A&M University-Commerce.

ANSI/NISO (1997). Guidelines for Abstracts. NISO Press.

Behnam, B. & Golpour, F. (2014). A Genre analysis of English and Iranian research articles abstracts in applied linguistics and mathematics. International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature, 3(5), 173-179. https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.3n.5p.173

Briones, R. R. Y. (2018). Move analysis of abstracts in applied linguistics research: The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) perspective. Asian Journal of English Language Studies (AJELS), 6, 25-55.

Can, S.; Karabacak, E.; & Qin, J. (2016). Structure of moves in research article abstracts in applied linguistics. Publications, 4(23), 2-16. https://doi.org/10.3390/publications4030023

Çakır, H. (2016). Native and non-native writers’ use of stance adverbs in English research article abstracts. Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, 6, 85-96. https://doi.org/10.4236/ojml.2016.62008

Darabad, M. A. (2016). Move analysis of research article abstracts: A cross-disciplinary study. International Journal of Linguistics, 8(2), 125-140. https://doi.org/10.5296/ijl.v8i2.9379

Ebrahimi, S. F & Chan, S. H. (2015). Research article abstracts in applied linguistics and economics: Functional analysis of the grammatical subject. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 35(4), 381–397.

EL-Dakhs, D. A. (2018). Comparative genre analysis of research article abstracts in more and less prestigious journals: Linguistics journals in focus. Research in Language, 16(1), 47-63. https://doi.org/10.2478/rela-2018-0002

Fallatah, W. (2016). Features of Saudi English research articles abstracts. Arab World English Journal, 7(2), 368-379. https://doi.org/10.24093/awej/vol7no2.25

Hyland, K. (2000). Disciplinary Discourses: Social Interactions in Academic Writing. Longman.

Ji, X. L. (2015). Comparison of abstracts written by native speakers and second language learners. Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, 5, 470-474. https://doi.org/10.4236/ojml.2015.55041

Kanoksilapatham, B. (2005). Rhetorical structure of biochemistry research articles. English for Specific Purposes, 24, 269–292. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2004.08.003

Katic M., Safranj J. (2018). An Analysis of Dissertation Abstracts Written by Non-native English Speakers at a Serbian University: Differences and Similarities Across Disciplines. In Chitez M., Doroholschi C., Kruse O., Salski Å., Tucan D. (Eds.), University Writing in Central and Eastern Europe: Tradition, Transition, and Innovation. Multilingual Education, vol 29. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95198-0_16

Miech, E. J.; Nave, B.; & Mosteller, F. (2005). The 20,000 Article Problem: How a Structured Abstract can Help Practitioners Sort out Educational Research. The Phi Delta Kappan, 86(5), 396-400. https://doi.org/10.1177/003172170508600512

Montesi, M. and Owen, J. M. (2007). Revision of author abstracts: how it is carried out by LISA editors. Aslib Proceedings: New Information Perspectives, 59(1), 26-45. https://doi.org/10.1108/00012530710725197

Newsom, T. W. (2011). A Critical Analysis of Ph.D. and Ed.D. Dissertation Abstracts Published During 2009 And 2010. [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of North Texas.

Ross J. S., Gross C. P., Desai, M.M., Hong, Y., Grant, A.O., Daniels, S.R. Hachinski, V. C., Gibbons, R. J. Gardner, T.J. Harlan M. Kumholz, H. M. (2006). Effect of Blinded Peer Review on Abstract Acceptance. JAMA. 295(14), 1675–1680. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.295.14.1675

Stein, W. (1997). A Genre Analysis of the TESOL Conference Abstract. [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of Central Oklahoma.

Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge University Press.

Tabatabaei, S. P.; Najafi, Z., and Gobadirad, H. (2016). The Rhetorical Structure of M.A. Abstracts Written by Students of English Language Teaching in Iran. Modern Journal of Language Teaching Methods (MJLTM), 6(2), 535-543.

Vrijhoef, HJM & Steuten, LMG (2007). How to write an abstract. European Diabetes Nursing, 4(3), 124-127 https://doi.org/10.1002/edn.93

Wang, W. (2002). Optimal Components of Research Publication Abstracts: Producing Abstracts that Meet the American National Standards. [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. The University of Mississippi.

Wang, S. P. & Tu, P. N. (2014). Tense use and move analysis in journal article abstracts. Taiwan Journal of TESOL, 11(1), 3-29.

Yang, L. X., & Tian, Y. (2015). A Cross-disciplinary study of evidentiality in abstracts of English research articles. Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, 5, 399-411. https://doi.org/10.4236/ojml.2015.54036

English Studies at NBU, Vol.6, Issue 2, 2020

Downloads

Published

2020-12-21

How to Cite

Bouziane, A., & Metkal, F. E. (2020). Differences in Research Abstracts written in Arabic, French, and English. English Studies at NBU, 6(2), 233–248. https://doi.org/10.33919/esnbu.20.2.4

Issue

Vol. 6 No. 2 (2020)

Section

Articles

License

All published articles in the ESNBU are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don't have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

In other words, under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license users are free to:
Share - copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt - remix, transform, and build upon the material

Under the following terms:

Attribution (by) - All CC licenses require that others who use your work in any way must give you credit the way you request, but not in a way that suggests you endorse them or their use. If they want to use your work without giving you credit or for endorsement purposes, they must get your permission first.

NonCommercial (nc) - You let others copy, distribute, display, perform, and modify and use your work for any purpose other than commercially unless they get your permission first.

If the article is to be used for commercial purposes, we suggest authors be contacted by email.

If the law requires that the article be published in the public domain, authors will notify ESNBU at the time of submission, and in such cases the article shall be released under the Creative Commons 1 Public Domain Dedication waiver CC0 1.0 Universal.

Copyright

Copyright for articles published in ESNBU are retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to the journal. Authors retain full publishing rights and are encouraged to upload their work to institutional repositories, social academic networking sites, etc. ESNBU is not responsible for subsequent uses of the work. It is the author's responsibility to bring an infringement action if so desired by the author.

Exceptions to copyright policy

Occasionally ESNBU may co-publish articles jointly with other publishers, and different licensing conditions may then apply.

Crossref
Scopus
Google Scholar
Europe PMC