Theme Structure and Thematic Progression Patterns in the Introduction Section of Psychology and Biotechnology Research Articles: A Comparative Study

Abstract

Studies on thematic structure and thematic progression patterns focused on abstract and discussion sections of scientific research articles. Therefore, there is a need for more studies investigating other sections of research articles. In this paper, we investigated thematic structure and thematic progression patterns in Biotechnology and Psychology research article introductions to capture any significant differences between these two fields. These two fields represent, respectively, hard and soft sciences. Halliday’s (2014) Systemic Functional Linguistics approach to language and McCabe’s (1999) thematic progression patterns were adopted in this study as the frameworks for the analysis. After collecting 30 articles with a total word count of 19,517 words, 15 in Biotechnology and 15 in Psychology, the data was manually analyzed using Microsoft Excel. Frequency count of Theme aspects was carried out using Excel. After that, a t-test was conducted to evaluate the significance of the differences across the two fields. The results indicate a preference for using unmarked Themes more than marked Themes in both disciplines. There was also a similar tendency in both disciplines to use more textual Themes than interpersonal Themes. Finally, the most employed thematic progression patterns were the constant pattern, followed by the zig-zag. The split Rheme and split Theme patterns were rarely used. Future studies need to investigate thematic structure and TP patterns in the introduction section of research articles across other disciplines in order to capture the differences between fields.