Analysis and comparison of research article abstracts published in Iranian and international journals in the fields of nursing and midwifery

Discourse analysts have employed genre analysis to discover textual structures of medical texts as well as to compare and contrast differences within and across genres due to variables such as language and cultural background. However، a lack of research is felt in analyzing the research article genre in the field of nursing and midwifery in the Iranian context. It seems that few studies have focused on finding the textual differences between abstracts published locally in Iran and those published internationally. In this study، 30 abstracts from two Iranian journals and 30 abstracts from two international journals were chosen and compared based on Swale''s and Nwogu''s model. Chi-square test was utilized to detect the possible differences. The results showed that Iranian and international abstracts were significantly different in providing «indicating a gap» and «indicating non-consistent results». No other significant differences were observed in the analysis. The findings can be incorporated in teaching materials for writing courses and encourage Iranian ESP teachers toward more research-based teaching. It also seems that further studies are needed for other aspects of writing.