Research article abstracts in English and Italian: Generic and cross-linguistic variation over the last 20 years

The paper examines comparatively and diachronically the generic structure of research article abstracts written in English for international scientific journals and abstracts written in Italian and published in Italian journals in the field of linguistics, with the aim of exploring generic and cross-linguistic variation over the last 20 years. The data consist of two small corpora of English and Italian linguistics research article abstracts spaced at ten-year intervals, namely 1997, 2007 and 2017. The analysis shows that the generic structure and rhetorical organisation of abstracts written in Italian conforms to the international conventions based on the norms of the English academic discourse community. However, they are rhetorically less complex than English abstracts. Diachronic variation has also been observed in the frequency and distribution of every single move across the two language corpora over the decades.