A SOCIO-RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF THE INTRODUCTION SECTION IN ACADEMIC EMPIRICAL ARTICLES ON THE DISCIPLINARY CULTURE OF THE EDUCATION AREA

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the sociorhetorical structure of the Introduction section in empirical academic articles in the specific subareas of Special Education, Educational Policy, and Educational Technology, considering the disciplinary culture of Education. Theoretically, we adopt Swales' sociorhetorical genre approach (1990; 2004) and the analysis of disciplinary culture by Hyland (2000) and Pacheco; Bernardino (2022). The methodology used is exploratory-descriptive, with a corpus of 60 empirical articles from sixteen education journals. We involved eleven experienced researchers who responded to interviews and questionnaires regarding epistemic beliefs, disciplinary practices, and sociorhetorical practices of the disciplinary culture under study. The results show that the Introduction section in these articles is constructed through the problematization of social, cultural, historical, and temporal aspects, literature review related to the theme, and study objectives. The analysis reveals similar sociorhetorical patterns in the production of these introductions in the three subareas, suggesting a general trend in the disciplinary culture of the Education field.