Exploring in-text bundle-move connection in medical research articles

Unlike previous studies that have focused primarily on bundle-move connection in a specific section of research articles, this study explored bundle-move connections across the Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion (IMRD) sections of medical research articles (MRAs). A corpus of 1 000 MRAs totalling 4.8 million words was compiled and divided into four sub-corpora. Four-word lexical bundles were extracted from each sub-corpus and mapped onto the rhetorical moves in which they occur based on the move model adapted from Nugwo. Results showed that the Introduction and Discussion sections were characterised by a predominant use of cross-move bundles (i.e. bundles that occurred in multiple moves), while the Methods and Results sections were marked by an intensive use of move-specific bundles (i.e. bundles that occurred in only one move). The structural analyses revealed that move-specific bundles in IMRD sections were mainly clausal, whereas cross-move bundles were primarily phrasal. The functional analyses indicated distinct move-specific bundle functional patterns in IMRD sections: text-oriented bundles prevailed in the Introduction and Results, research-oriented bundles dominated the Methods, while the Discussion featured both text-oriented and participant-oriented bundles. A similar functional trend was observed for cross-move bundles in IMRD sections. Our findings suggested marked intra-sectional similarities and variations of bundle-move connection across MRAs.