Genre knowledge to enhance persuasion: structure and language choices

The skills of narration and persuasion in the context of research reporting, you need to be aware of the distinctive features of research articles, in general, and of the specific research-reporting conventions of your discipline, in particular. This is known as genre knowledge, which implies a familiarity with the widely accepted characteristics of the content, structure and style of a text from a particular genre.

As a researcher, you can gain credibility by following the genre rules of written communication in your discipline. The basics of such genre knowledge related to research reporting include the following:

• organising the contents of your article into sections using the IMRaD pattern or its disciplinary variant (N.B. the IMRaD (Introduction, Method, Results and Discussion) structure, while widely accepted as a model, certainly has a variety of modified forms in different fields and disciplines),
  
• keeping to the conventional information content and sequence of the individual sections (e.g. the Introduction presents the i) background of the study, ii) references to previous literature, iii) relevance of the study, iv) research question or purpose of the study),
• discipline-specific use of titles (complete sentences, noun phrases or compound titles),
• discipline-specific use of references (types of in-text referencing and list of references),
• the types of illustrative devices (tables, graphs, figures) used, and how these are integrated into the body of the text,
• the style of language used in research articles
  • formal written language
  • discipline-specific terminology
  • general scientific idiom: appropriate word choices, word forms and combinations [get results ==> obtain results; do a test ==> carry out a test]
  • grammatical choices typical for the type of article you are writing, including use of articles, typical usage of verb tenses in different sections of the article, preference for active or passive voice,
  • use of punctuation, capitals, abbreviations, etc.

The best way of exploring the disciplinary conventions of your field is perhaps to analyse articles in your field, paying particular attention to the above features and to familiarise yourself with the requirements and instructions for publication in target journals.