4.5　Conclusion

The moves identified in the present study resemble those in previous models.Although the nomenclature is different,the first move Familiarising readers with the field resembles the communicative function of Establishing a territory in CARS model(Swales,1990);Providing rationales serve similar function with Establishing a niche;Presenting the study resembles Occupying the niche.The moves in the CARS model(Swales,1990)follow an ecosystem analogy which connects establishing a new study in a research area with fighting for living space in the natural world.In both situations,the protagonist needs to get to know a territory(as the first move of establishing a territory),push or fight others away(as the second move of establishing a niche)and then take the space(as the third move of occupying the niche).However,the findings of the present study show that the thesis opening section,instead of brutally fighting for space,performs more delicate and complicated tasks,such as justifying the research,building theoretical frameworks and diplomatically communicating with others in the field through referencing.This might be related with the genre difference between RAs and theses.Compared with RA writers,Master students are often novice members of a community who are less aware of and perhaps not so well equipped for the fight for space.Additionally,RAs are written for peer researchers to report contributions to the field,while Master Theses are written by novice researchers whose report is probably their first serious scientific enquiry.On the basis of these considerations,the researchers opt to replace Swales’ecosystem analogy with a more transparent description based on the metatexts used by thesis writers.

Compared with CARS model and the models based on it,the present study identified a new move,namely Establishing a theoretical framework,which is frequently mentioned by thesis writers in their metatexts and realised in the main text.The move defines key constructs and describes the relationships between the constructs,laying the foundation of presenting research design and findings in later chapters.

This move came to my attention because of the frequency of related content in the metatexts.In other words,the new move was identified because of the emic approach employed and thus the researcher proposed that the combination of metatext analysis,move analysis and expert consultation can obtain a more comprehensive understanding on the schematic structure of genres.

The present study draws attention to the value of exploiting metatexts in genre analysis.Along with interviewing specialist informants,analysing metatexts is an effective way of gaining an insider’s perspective on the organisation and communicative functions of a discourse.Metatexts are used in a wide range of academic and non-academic genres,such as research articles,theses(Kawase,2015;Bunton,1998),software specifications,user manuals,and business plans.Consequently,the methods employed in the present study should be of use in obtaining emic views on the communicative functions of genres,especially in academic genres of disciplines other than Linguistics and Applied Linguistics and non-academic genres since the analysts are usually outsiders with respect to these discourse communities.