Direct quotations in the rhetorical structure of literature PhD thesis introductions

Abstract

Direct quotation (DQ) use varies considerably across disciplines, from complete absence in hard sciences to relative frequency in social sciences. This study investigates DQs in literature, focusing on PhD thesis introductions in English. A corpus of 15 introductions tagged for move-and-step genre analysis was used to investigate DQ frequency, their distribution in the rhetorical structure of introductions, and source text types used for DQs. The findings show that (i) DQs are the most common source use practice in the corpus; (ii) DQs are concentrated in three rhetorical steps: reviewing previous research, presenting the analysed literary work, and making topic generalisations; and (iii) source text type used for DQs is associated with specific rhetorical steps. These findings suggest that DQs are essential for the realisation of the rhetorical purpose of the steps which carry them and for knowledge construction in literature PhD theses.