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Variation in rhetorical moves in grant proposals of US humanists and scientists
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Pragmatic AnalysisGrant WritingGrant ProposalsRhetoricApplied LinguisticsScience StudyDiscourse AnalysisLanguage StudiesLanguage-based ApproachUs HumanistsRhetorical MovesHumanitiesDiscourse StructureScholarly CommunicationScience And Technology StudiesProfessional WritingLinguisticsEu Grant ProposalsScience Policy
Grant proposals are a key form of professional and scientific writing used to secure funding, and recent linguistic studies have identified rhetorical moves within EU grant proposals. This study aimed to assess how accurately writers from five humanities and science disciplines could identify these rhetorical moves and to examine differences across disciplines and gender. The authors analyzed 14 grant proposals and conducted text‑based interviews with the writers after the move analysis. The analysis revealed that while the move system was clear to writers, US grant proposals required an additional institutional‑commitment claim, a hypothesis statement beyond goals, and more metatextual transitions than the EU proposals.
Grant proposals are a significant part of professional writing. Described as 'the most basic form of scientific writing' (Myers 1990: 41), they are the key to obtaining research funding and support for professional activity. Recently, grant proposals have been included among promotional genre studies by applied linguists, and moves' have been suggested for the rhetorical structures in the texts of EU grant proposals (Connor and Mauranen, 1999). The present study uses these moves to analyze rhetorical variation in 14 research grant proposals written by five humanities and science researchers for US government and private funders. The major purpose of the study was to determine the accuracy with which the moves were identified with the writers; the use of the moves among the five different disciplines and by male and female writers was also studied. Text-based interviews were conducted with the writers following the text analysis of grant proposals. The results showed that the system of moves was clear and meaningful to the researcher-writers, but that US grant proposals required an additional 'institutional commitment' claim, a hypothesis statement in addition to goals, and more metatextual transitional statements than the proposals in the earlier EU study