Resúmenes y abstracts de artículos científicos: variaciones retóricas e implicaciones didácticas

Abstract

Abstract is an important part of research papers. Frequently it is the only part of papers Latin-American-scholars read, because they have no time to read everything published in the area or no full-text- access. This part-genre has been investigated in different languages, cultures and fields; however, to date, no study has been reported in English or Spanish Dentistry. So, this paper describes the rhetorical variations in abstracts published in dental journals (1999-2011). We adopt a genre analysis approach, combining textual, contextual and corpus analysis. 270 dental research paper abstracts were selected at random from 3 Hispano-American and 3 Anglo-American journals: 90 (Spanish), 90 (English, pairs of the former) written by Hispano-American authors, and 90 (English) written for Anglo-American journals. The 3 groups exhibit rhetorical variations. Hispano-American journals use nonstructured abstracts and Anglo-American ones, structured abstracts. Spanish abstracts do not follow the standard format (Introduction-Methods-Results-Conclusion), which constitutes the different sections of the underlying papers. The four components were present to some degree in the Anglo-American abstracts. The Introduction is the most frequent unit in the 3 groups. The frequency of occurrence of the Methods unit is also similar. However, the Results and Conclusion units tends to be higher in Anglo-American abstracts. English abstracts written for Hispano-American journals do not use Anglo-American rhetorical strategies, but they tend to transfer Spanish structures by translating their pairs. Hispano-American abstracts neither justify their research as a way of creating a niche, nor include the Results and Conclusion units. They do not summarize the findings of the accompanying paper but function as an introductory section. Rhetorical variations found could be explained by the expectations and levels of competitiveness of members of the dental communities and its size. Results have implications for the teaching of academic writing in Dentistry.