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This paper reports the investigation of the organisational structure of introductory sections of research papers written by Polish authors in English and Polish. The aim of the study was to test whether in view of cultural differences, reflected in the AngloAmerican and Polish intellectual styles, the rhetorical pattern of research papers would vary between the two cultures. The selected texts were analysed in terms of Swales' Creating a Research Space (CARS) model (Swales 1990). On application of the model in the analysis of articles from the English corpus, it was found that it could only be employed in very generic terms. The analysis of the Polish corpus revealed that the variation between Anglo-American and Polish schematic patterns was too significant to justify the implementation of the same investigative tool.
Introduction
Among analysts who have dealt with the structure of scientific discourse in the English-speaking world, crucial work was carried out by John Swales (1981, 1983, 1984, 1990). On the basis of an analysis of a corpus of 16 articles in each of physics, biology/medicine and social sciences fields, Swales (1981) initially proposed a four-move schema to describe a rhetorical organisation in research article introductions. In 1990 he revised his model and replaced it with a Create a Research Space (CARS) communication move schema. The new model is based on the analysis of 158 article introductions, 48 of Swales'1981 study, and 110 new introductions, drawn from physics and educational psychology journals from the years 1943, 1963 and 1983 (Swales and Najjar 1987). The model consists of the following three communicative moves and steps within them (Swales 1990:141):
MOVE 1: Establishing centrality, Step 1: Claiming centrality, and/or Step 2: Making topic generalisation, and/or Step 3: Reviewing previous research;
MOVE 2: Establishing a niche, Step 1A: Counter claiming, or Step1B: Indicating a gap, or Step 1C: Question arising, or Step 1D: Continuing tradition;
MOVE 3: Occupying the niche, Step 1A: Outlining purposes, or Step 1B: Announcing present research, Step 2: Announcing primary findings, Step3: Indicating research article structure.
Among those who either commented on, replicated or modified Swales' approach were Dudley-Evans (1986), Crookes (1986), Swales and Najjar (1987), Jacoby (1987), Peng (1987) and Lewin and Fine (1996). Crookes (1986) tested Swales' 1981 move schema on 96 articles...