Genre Dynamism in Research Articles: A Genre-based Approach to Hyperlinks of Research Articles in Hypertextual Environments

Current advances in Web-based technology and the pervasive application of electronic communication in professional or educational settings raise the demand for meticulous examination of how these new advancements can be manipulated most effectively by EFL practitioners and learners for educational purposes. In order to facilitate the process of writing hypertextual research articles using Swales’ genre analysis model (1990/2004), this study attempted to see whether the hyperlinks of hypertextual articles occur at the places of move boundaries. For this purpose, the introduction and discussion sections of 30 Applied Linguistics hypertextual research articles were examined in terms of moves and hyperlinks. The results revealed that hypertextual research articles followed the same models proposed by Swales for their introduction and discussion sections. However, there were no relationship between the segmentations of texts at the hyperlinks and the places of move boundaries. In other words, hyperlinks did not occur at the places of move boundaries. This study may have implications for integrating technology with genre-based approaches to teaching academic writing.