Issues of textual hybridity in a major academic genre : PhD dissertations vs. research articles

Abstract

The paper presents a study on properties shared by text plans of PhD dissertations and research articles. The analysis combines concepts from the Interactionnisme Socio- discursif (Bronckart, 1996), and Text Theory - genre parameter, textual realization device and genre marker (Coutinho & Miranda, 2009). In the 130 University of Coimbra PhD disserta- tions (2003–2012) corpus, there are four types of text plans: topic-based, IMRDC (Introduction – Methods – Results – Discussion – Conclusion), anthology and mixed plans (Swales, 2004; Santos & Silva, accepted). Texts show two types of hybridity: genre blending and genre embedding (Mäntynen & Shore, 2014). In Social Sciences and Humanities, topic-based plans share the typical structure of these areas research articles. IMRDC are dominant in Sciences PhD dissertations, as in these areas research articles. There are also anthology plans, which sustain a double relationship with research articles by repeating already published, accepted or submitted texts. These hybridity issues challenge the separation between genres. Pragmatic aims, institutional context, text length and metatextual genre label may thus be the only parameters that separate both genres.