1. Introduction

              Language In recent years, the field of academic writing has received particular attention and has been the focus of much research by various researchers in the field of genre analysis. The main objective of such analysis is to determine and uncover the complexity of intercultural, generic and textual issues involved in this field (Gea Valor, 2000). According to Ventoa and Mauranen (1996), “the academic world depends crucially on writing, and therefore the competent members of the academic community are expected to be able to produce articles and books within their field” (P 7). In order to enter the academic world, academic writers need to be aware of the beliefs, values and conventions used by professionals in the discourse community (Swales, 1990). To be accepted by the readers of discourse community, one is required to write appropriately and to follow conventional styles of discourse (Leki & Carson, 1997).

Following Swales (1990) “a genre comprises a class of communicative events, the members of which share some set of communicative purposes. These purposes are recognized by the expert members of the parent discourse community and thereby constitute the rational for genre. This rational shapes the schematic structure of the discourse and influences and constrains choice of content and style”. According to Conner and Mauranen (1999, p.51), “a genre in this framework, is a text, either spoken or written, that serves a particular communicative purpose in a society and is composed of a series of segments called move” (p.58).

As can be seen, the notion of communicative purpose is central to the above definitions of genre. Therefore, an important criterion to conduct genre analytic studies seems to be a communicative event recognized by members of a discourse community as having a communicative purpose. Within the academic context, the fact that the communicative function of book review as “evaluating knowledge production” (Motta-Roth, 1996) is recognized by the expert members of the discourse community, can justify its existence as a genre in its own right. According to Babaei and Ansary (2005), if we accept that the main purpose of book reviews at the end of most academic journals is to evaluate the produced knowledge, then it can be claimed that they are an aid in the acquisition of academic literacy.

With the rapid growth of technology, the field of research also has undergone new trends and traditions. Sichen (2020), for example, surveyed a wide range of investigations available in the genre literature. She defines three developments in genre analysis; namely, digital genre analysis, multimodal genre analysis, and genre innovation. Additionally, the study offers the main changes in rapidly developing digital media and some of the challenges of genre analysis which can be resolved by genre scholars in the technology-driven era. Sichen points out the improvements in genre studies as interconnected and conclude how the developments facilitates each other. The study finally claims that digitality and multimodality contribute to the innovation of genres. Genre studies are carried out in different fields of studies, for example some have used corpus analysis to carry out comparative investigations on research article abstracts (e.g., Alharbi, 2021; Duan & Wei, 2021, Prativwi & Kurniawan, 2021), music (e.g., Rafi, Noman, Prodhan, & Alam, 2021; Tang, Xu, & Yuan, 2021), studies of discourse (e.g., Olagunjo, 2022), among others.

The present study hypothesizes possible variation in the rhetorical structure of academic book reviews as a factor in the language culture. By concentrating on book review, the present study aims at shedding some light on “somewhat neglected genre” (Hyland, 2000) or one of Swale’s (1990) “occluded genre”. At the macro-level of analysis and from cross-cultural perspective, this study seeks to investigate the generic rhetorical structure of book reviews in terms of the notion of move and step in two written cultures: English and Persian. In this regard, a move in a text is defined as a functional unit, used for some identifiable rhetorical purpose. Moves vary in size, but normally contain at least one proposition; in addition, they typically exhibit some internal coherence. A step or the term “strategy” is used by Bhatia (1993) to refer to the way in which the writer or speaker realizes or executes a move. According to Swales (1990), if the move can only be realized through a series of strategies in a particular order, the strategies can be considered as steps.

2.     Literature Review

The significance of the book review in discourse community is highlighted by North (1992) in his article “on reviews in rhetoric and composition” as he argues that the study of book reviews is an urgent concern and it is necessary to develop a model in order to account for the discursive practices involved in the writing of review. For Gea Valor (2000) a book review is “a discourse type which basically involves description, information and evaluation” (p. 12). So, book review is a descriptive and critical or evaluative account of a book. It provides a summary of content and analysis of structure, it also assesses the value of a book and recommend (or not recommend) the book to other readers. In spite of the fact that book reviews played an important role in academic communication for many years, this type of short genre has somehow remained neglected in today’s linguistic research until very recently. As Swales (1990) points out, one of the factors which has a very important role in the overall characterization of a genre is the rhetorical structure of the text, so a genre must be seen in terms of its generic structure in text. Studies conducted on the rhetorical structures of book review (Motta-Roth, 1998; Nicolaisen, 2002) have identified the communicative features of book review which make it a genre in its own right.

A comparison of the results of these studies reveals no crucial differences in the overall organization of book reviews across different disciplines, in the sense that different moves perform the major rhetorical functions of book review. So, it can be hypothesized that a common pattern of overall structure exists across disciplines. Despite these common features, some other studies suggest that some slight variations exist within the overall rhetorical organization of book reviews across disciplines and languages. For example, Babaei and Ansary (2005) in their study on the effect of cross-disciplinary variation on lexico-grammatical features of English academic book reviews, in an attempt to identify prototypical generic textual features of book review in the field of physics, sociology, and literature suggest some modifications in the Motta-Roth’s (1998) model and the need to replace it with a new model. In fact, in their study they proposed a seven-move model for the rhetorical structure of academic book review.

Furthermore, the factor of the language culture is an important criterion in the possible variation in the rhetorical structure of academic book reviews that cannot be ignored. De Carvalho (2001), in her study of the rhetorical structure of English and Portuguese academic book reviews of literature, applies Motta-Roth’s (1998) four move model and proposes slightly different schemata. In fact, her results led her to reduce Motta-Roth’s (1998) four moves to three by fusing moves 2 (Outlining the book) and move 3 (Highlighting parts of the book) into only one move. De Carvalho’s (2001) study of book reviews from two writing cultures, American and Portuguese, also suggests that while all the texts in her corpora share a common communicative purpose, different rhetorical features are identified which can be related to differing cultural expectations.

A considerable amount of work has been done on introductions compared to the other sections in academic texts (e.g., Kawase, 2018; Ono, 2017; Soler-Monreal, 2016). For example, Sayfouri (2010) carried out a contrastive study of Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) and the Introduction and Discussion sections of English medical research articles in Iranian and English-American (E-A) medical journals. She stated that the analytic results of move analysis phase presented that the two groups of Iranian articles, compared to E-A articles, applied significantly fewer number of Sub-moves of Reference to main research problems, Reference to limitations of previous research, and Reference to main research procedures in their Introduction sections. In the SFL genre analysis phase, compared to E-A ones, although Iranian papers implemented significantly fewer proportions of ideational Grammatical Metaphor (GM) in general in addition to the incongruent forms of qualities, the two groups of papers applied the GM types with a similar pattern of ranking order and similar proportions of nominalization. Further findings that emerged synthetically during text analysis showed that lack of metadiscourse markers and concerns of paragraph development in a remarkable number of Iranian research articles could impair intelligibility during move analysis. In a comparative genre analysis study, Talebzadeh, Ghafar Samar, Kiany & Akbari (2013) investigated the steps to a successful abstract and found similarities in the presence of Introduction, Method, and Conclusion sections of research articles written by Iranian and international researchers. Their results also revealed differences in the realization of units, moves, and steps. In addition, they argued that the differences can be a sign of the varying cultural values and norms of the two groups of authors. 

In a comparative genre analysis study on the abstracts of published research articles in prestigious versus less prestigious journals, El-Dakhs (2018) used Hyland’s (2000) model of move analysis and Hyland’s (2005) taxonomy of metadiscourse. The researcher found out that the introduction; purpose and method sections in abstracts in less prestigious journals typically include longer moves while significantly lengthier findings are included in abstracts in more prestigious journals. As regards metadiscourse, in less prestigious journals, abstracts apply significantly more evidentials, frame markers, and transitions whereas in more prestigious journals, the abstracts exhibit higher uses of hedges, code glosses, self-mentions, and boosters. Likewise, following Swales’ (1990) model of genre-analysis, Villanueva, Dolom, and Belen (2018) conducted a corpus-driven study on the “About Us” sections of Asian Association of Open Universities websites. The researchers sought to provide the members of the AAOU with an overview of their common communicative purposes, overused or underused keywords, and their usage of these words which they may opt to work on in the future. Anthony (2017) found that the top 100 keywords with positive keyness revealed inherent characteristics of open and distance learning organizations as well as features common to higher education organizations. The investigation also proposed that the use of adjectives and verbs with positive denotations is very conventional in the “About Us” sections. Concordance for multiple keywords related to the overarching theme of the AAOU 2017 Conference then found that the AAOU members are active in the discourse about accessibility, assessment, and quality, whereas there is not much discourse on openness, inclusivity, and justice. Overall, subscribing to equality and equity could still be a point of argumentation among the AAOU members, since the concordance analysis showed, as a goal and principle, more discourse on equality than equity.

It can be noticed that so far, no study has examined the rhetorical structure of Persian book reviews that gives it genre status (Motta-Roth, 1998). Regarding various studies conducted on Persian genres, the dismissal of Persian book review is felt as a gap in discourse community which this study aims to fill. Moreover, it is not known whether its rhetorical structure is shared by comparable texts in other languages. As Moreno (2004) explains, the idea that the rhetorical structures of texts in different languages might vary greatly and that such variation should be taken into account in language teaching programs since it was first proposed by Kaplan (1966) has received considerable attention.

It is hoped that this study will provide some helpful insights about the rhetorical organizations of book review employed by Persian and English book reviewers. Familiarity with the rhetorical structure of this genre would help readers to come to text with some expectations of the overall content and form of the text which enables them to read book reviews more critically and apply certain strategies more properly while reading the text. It is also important for Persian writers involved in writing book review to observe appropriate generic format of the book review proposed in this study and create more acceptable instances of book reviews by developing sensitivity to and awareness of subtle interplay between the elements generating this genre. Finally, the identification of rhetorical variations between the two writing cultures, would also encourage first language writers of book reviews to develop necessary awareness about their own culture’s writing conventions and those of others. In order to address the aforementioned objectives, the present study attempted to find answer to the following research question:

• Is there any significant difference in the rhetorical structures of Persian and English academic book reviews in the field of sociology?

3. Research Method

             3.1. In terms Corpus of book reviews

The data set for the present study consisted of the two sub-corpora, both of which are book review in academic journals, one in English and the other in Persian. In order to make the two sub-corpora comparable as far as possible, some confounding factors like the historical time in which the texts had been published and the academic discipline were taken into account (Conner & Moreno, 2005; Moreno, 2008). Therefore, a random sample of 60 book reviews (30 in English and 30 in Persian) published in the years (2007-2020) in the field of sociology served as the corpus of the study. To select the corpus of the study, first some list of English and Persian academic journals published in the field of sociology were collected through checking the library reference of Shiraz University. From this list, 3 academic journals were collected; one in English: American Journal of Sociology, two in Persian; Month Book (field of social science) and National Studies Quarterly. In order to select book reviews from the selected journals, first book reviews published from 2007 to 2020 were selected randomly. On the whole 214 book reviews (English = 101), (Persian = 113) were collected. From this primary cluster, a secondary corpus of 60 book reviews (30 in English, 30 in Persian) were randomly selected that served as the corpus of the study. Two additional criteria were also taken into account in the collection of corpus. First, book reviews written by a single book reviewer were chosen to eliminate individual differences in their style of writing. Second, reviews that were exceptionally short (1000 or less words) or long (over 5000 words) were excluded from the sample.

           3.2. Procedure

In the present study, genre analysis (Swales, 1990; Bhatia, 1993; Suarez & Moreno, 2008) forms the basic framework for the macro-textual analysis. According to Swales (1990) and Bhatia (1993), the shared communicative purpose is the principal determinant that characterizes a class of communicative events as a genre. In this study, therefore, the key genre determinant is the communicative purpose. Moreno and Suarez’s (2008) generic model of book review was found to form a relevant and suitable frame of reference to the current study, as this model is one of the most recent and comprehensive genre scheme proposed to book review genre. Suarez and Moreno (2008) in their study of genre analysis of book reviews developed a model which demonstrates the move pattern of book reviews. In the move-scheme suggested in their model, four obligatory moves were identified to constitute the structure of book review and various steps have been subsumed under each move: Move 1: Introducing the book; Move 2: Outlining the book; Move 3: Highlighting parts of the book; and Move 4: Providing closing evaluation of the book. The obligatory moves are needed to shape the conventional framework of a specific genre completely and to realize the communicative intentions fully. On the other hand, the optional moves and strategies tend to occur randomly and are not recognized as necessary by all the members of a discourse community. The first analytical step in move analyses of the present study was to examine the book reviews in order to identify the obligatory and the optional moves and steps present in the communicative event as well as their frequencies and sequences. This analysis was conducted for the two corpora, i.e., the English and the Persian separately. Throughout the analysis, if a new move or step was detected which had not been recognized in the Suarez and Moreno’s model, it was added to the model. Moreover, any element in Suarez and Moreno which was not detected in the present data was omitted from the final move-scheme.

           3.3. Sample analyses

In what follows, for more clarification, two detailed sample move analyses (one in English and the other in Persian) are presented.

               3.3.1. Data analysis:

In move analysis, following Suarez and Moreno’s (2008) model of book review, an attempt was made to identify moves and steps for the sample of book reviews in both languages, then outlining extracted move models for each corpus, the frequency of each move/step was computed and compared (see Figures 1 and 2, and table 3). Then, the significance of the cultural variation of the corresponding moves and the steps realizing each move was investigated through some application of Chi-square test (an appropriate non-parametric statistical test of significance; see tables 4, 5, and 6).

               3.3.2. English Sample

The sample text in English is a review by Steven Pfaff of a book entitled Protest Politics in Germany: Movements on the Left and Right since the 1960s, published in American Journal of Sociology (2007), No. 3, Volume 115, pp. 606-608. In this paragraph, the author tries to define the general topic and achieves this goal through:

Move 1. Step 1.1. Defining the general topic of the book

Protest politics in Germany is a carefully detailed and persuasive study of social movements in an important western democracy. Roger Karapin’s ambitious book not only offers a comprehensive explanation of German protest movements but also help better specify political process theory (PPT), proposing a general explanation of protest campaigns on both the left (against urban renewal and nuclear energy) and the right (against immigration) across time and locations.

Move 1. Step 1.6. Informing about the writing /method used by the writer:

Drawing on a rich trove of data, including 100 interviews with activists and public officials, news media, and public archives, Karapin traces the process by which protest groups first assumable and then expand or collapse through their relations with bystanders and authorities.

Move 2. Step 2.2. Stating the topic of parts of the book with no reference to specific chapters:

He identifies the actions and contextual conditions that lead to cooperation or confrontation between protest groups and public officials. He shows that opportunities are neither static features of a policy nor an expression of its institutions but rather produced by challengers and authorities acting within the constraints of existing political arrangements, rules and available sources. Contentious action, combined with the reaction of public authorities, drives a cycle of opportunity expansion and contraction that make protest tactic effective or neutralize them and either draw in or deter elite support and bystander participation. Karapin’s main theoretical contribution is to make PPT more dynamic and interactive, but he also marshals evidence to show how it explains German protest better than rival structural, socioeconomic, and institutional theories. His approach seems to especially underline the importance of tactical innovation and coalitions for social movements’ success.

Move 3. Step 3.1. Providing focused evaluation:

There is much to admire in a book like this that focuses on strategic interaction and dynamic process to explain protest. While Karapin owes much to the process-oriented perspective4 proposed by Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly in Mechanisms of Contention (Cambridge University Press, 2001), there is little here of either resource mobilization or framing and cultural processes, marking the book as a substantial departure from prior synthetic revisions. Given that it eschews analyses of cultural processes, it is surprising that, despite the author’s explicit endorsement of rational-choice microfoundations (pp. 12-13), there is no discussion of alternative explanations that might be derived from collective action theory or expectancy-value theory. Just as more attention to motivational factors would be welcome, more detailed analyses of the logic of collective action that underlines interaction between protest-group leaders, radicals and splitters, and public officials might reinforce his explanations. Throughout Karapin presents his cases thoroughly and evaluates evidence judiciously.

Move 4. Option 4.2. Recommending the book despite indicated shortcomings:

These questions and others aside, protest politics in Germany represents a step forward in social movement studies and deserves to be read widely by specialists in protest and political sociology more generally. Students of social movements would do well to emulate its thoughtful study design and rigorous empirical approach.

3.3.3. Persian Sample

           The sample text in Persian is a review by Fateme Safavi of a book entitled Modern Government and National Integration in Iran, published in National Study Quarterly (2008), No. 4, Volume 32, PP. 153-156.

Move 1. Step 1.1. Making the book specification

کتاب دولت مدرن و یکپارچگی ملی در ایران (1320-1300 ه.ش) در حوزه تاریخ اجتماعی ایران توسط داریوش قنبری نگاشته شده و در سال 1385 از سوی انتشارات تمدن ایرانی با شمارگان 1000 نسخه منتشر شده است.

The book Modern National State and Integration in Iran (1320-1300 AH) in the field of social history of Iran by Dariush Ghanbari. It was written and published in 1385 by Iranian Civilization Publications with the number of 1000 copies.

Move 1. Step 1.2. Defining the general topic of the book:

در این اثر که با مقدمه ناشر و نویسنده آغاز میشود مفاهیمی چون دولت به عنوان کانون تحولات جامعه٬ ملت به سان موجودیتی سیاسی٬ حاکمیت٬ قدرت و ساختار آن گفتگو شده و ویژگی هی دولت های کطلقه مدرن و پیشامدرن به نفصیل تشریح میشوند.

In this work, which begins with the introduction of the publisher and the author, concepts such as the state as the center of society's developments, the nation as a political entity, sovereignty, power and its structure are discussed, and the characteristics of modern and pre-modern state governments are explained in detail.

Move 2. Step 2.1. Providing a general view of organization of the book

کتاب مورد نظر در چهار فصل و با 286 صفحه٬ همراه با پی نوشت های مفصل در پایان هر فصل و به انضمام کتابنامه فارسی٬ انگلیسی و نمایه افراد تنظیم شده است.

The book in question has four chapters and 286 pages, with detailed footnotes at the end of each chapter and a bibliography, Farsi, English and profile of people is set.

Move 2 Step 2.2. Stating the topic of parts of the book with reference to specific chapters

فصل اول از صفحات 9 تا 76 با عنوان مفاهیم و نظریات٬ تاملی در مفاهیم اساسی و نظریات صاحب نظران مختلف در باب مفاهیم مطروحه و ارائه نظریاتی مرتبط با مبحث مورد نظر نگارنده است. قدرت و ویژگی های آن مفهوم کلیدی است که در نخستین فصل این کتاب بررسی شده است. تنیدگی دو واژه دولتو قدرت٬ تفکیک پذیری آن را دشوار میسازد. اهمیت قدرت در علم سیاست از جنبه های مختلف و شیوه های گوناگون مطالعه ای مفاهیم٬ از موضوعاتی است کا حائذ اهمیت است زیرا در تعریف این مفاهیم برخی به ساختار و برخی به عاملیت پرداخته اند.

The first chapter from pages 9 to 76 with the title of concepts and ideas, a reflection on the basic concepts and ideas of different experts about the proposed concepts and theoretical presentation are related to the author's topic. Its power and characteristics are the key concepts that it is reviewed in the first chapter of this book. The tension between the two words "government" and "power" makes it difficult to separate them. Importance of power is one of the most important issues in political science from different aspects and different ways of studying concepts because in the definition of these concepts, some have focused on structure and some on agency.

Move 3. Step 3.1. Providing triple evaluation (structure, style, content):

1)  Form Review:

در بررسی کتاب از بعد شکلی میتوان بیان داشت که نویسنده کتاب اثری را تدوین نموده که مطالب آن از انسجام و پیوستگی برخوردار بوده و نثر روان و شیوایی قلم موجب ایجاد تمایل در خواننده به دنبال کردن مطلب می گردد. از آن جایی که در این مکتوب اغلاط چاپی چندانی به چشم نمی خورد حاکی از کیفیت مناسب آن برای نشر می باشد. موارد لازم برای اصلاح به شرح زیر است:

In reviewing the book from the form side, it can be said that the author of the book has compiled a work whose content is coherent and the fluent prose and eloquence of the pen make the reader want to follow the content. Since there are not many typographical errors in this book, it indicates its suitable quality for publication. The necessary items for correction are as follows:

در صفحه 149 پاراگراف دوم سطر آخر حاکم گردانند- گردانن٬ درج شده است.

On page 149 of the second paragraph, the last line of Haqam Gardanand, Gardanan is inserted. (Present author for clarification: i.e., make it ruler, make is written mistakenly as mae)

2) Methodological Review

کتاب مورد بحث به لحاظ روشی دارای خط سیر مشخصی است و مطالب مطروحه در یک قالب و چارجوب مناسب تدوین شده است. اگرچه مولف در فصل نخست کتاب مطابق معمول از طرح مفروظه ها و یا سوالات مستقیم خودداری ورزیده اما چینش گفتارها٬ مفاهیم و نظریات به نحوی است که مخاطب به سهولت مفروظه های ذهنی مولف را در می یابد

The book in question has a specific course in terms of method and the topics are presented in a suitable format and framework.  Although, in the first chapter of the book, as usual, the author refrained from proposing assumptions or direct questions but the arrangement of speeches, concepts and ideas is in such a way that the audience can easily understand the author's mental assumptions.

3) Content Review

نویسنده در این اثر ما را در دریافت چگونگی استقرار دولت مدرن و پیشامدرن٬ ساختار قدرت و عناصر مرتبط با این  ساختارها همراهی می نماید. و همچنان که ویژگی ها٬ ابعاد و تغییر و تحولات چنین مفاهیمی را در پرتو نظریات و رویکردهای گوناگون تبیین کرده٬ بعد نظری بحث را در فصل اول چارچوب محکم خود قرار داده و این فصل را بن مایه تحلیل های فصول بعدی گرفته و همین فصل است که دیدگاه های مولف را پیش بینی می کند.

          In this work, the author helps us understand how the modern and pre-modern state was established; the power structure and related elements accompany the structures. And also the characteristics, dimensions and changes and developments of such concepts in the light of theories and explained various approaches, put the theoretical aspect of the discussion in the first chapter of its solid framework and this chapter took the essence for the analysis of the next chapters and it is this chapter that predicts the views of the author.

Move 4. Step 4.1. Definitely recommending the book:

در مجموع این کتاب که به تحلیل جامعه شناسانه تاریخ سیاسی ایران نشسته می تواند مرجع مناسبی برای مطالعه علاقه مندان در این زمینه باشد.

          All in all, this book, based on the sociological analysis of Iran's political history, can be a suitable reference for study for those interested in this field.

4. Findings

In this section, the overall generic structures of English and Persian book reviews are first presented. Afterwards, rhetorical similarities and differences between the two corpora are described considering the results obtained from the investigation of the frequency of occurrence of moves and steps.

The results of move analysis of book reviews

As mentioned before, the rhetorical structure of the book review was investigated using Suarez and Moreno’s (2008) model of book review. This analysis was employed twice, investigating English and Persian corpora, separately. In order to extract the generic structure of book review, ‘moves’ and ‘steps’ had to be identified. To do so, a through move-analysis was conducted on each corpus whereby the obligatory and optional moves and steps were detected and their frequencies and orders were calculated. The move analysis of the two corpora revealed that all four obligatory moves as those proposed by Suarez and Moreno (2008) were identified in both corpora, these obligatory moves are as follows: Move 1: Introducing the book; Move 2: Outlining the book; Move 3: Highlighting parts of the book; and Move 4: Providing closing evaluation of the book. The only observed difference in terms of move realization was related to the identification of a new optional move in Persian corpus which appeared at the end of review and was absent in its English counterpart. This final move has been labeled: “Presenting complementary information” by the researchers of the study and is observed to be realized through different steps. Apart from this discrepancy, it was noticed that four similar moves were employed by both the English and Persian book reviewers, but the two corpora also revealed a number of differences in the steps which realized the moves. Tables 1 and 2 demonstrate the recurrent generic structures of English and Persian book reviews, respectively. Where there is a difference in the step utilized, it is marked using an asterisk. It should be pointed out that the sequences of steps were not necessarily the same as the sequence of the presentation of steps here. The sequence of steps changed from time to time, but it could be said that the general sequence of the steps was as follows:

        Table 1: The generic structure of English book review

         Table 2: The generic structure of Persian book review

As shown in tables 1 and 2 above, there is one step and one option which are found in the Persian corpus, but not in its English counterpart. The step was commonly seen to appear as the first step within move 1 and is: Move 1. Step 1.1: Making the book specification. Persian writers commonly apply this step to open their review by providing some information about the general characteristics of the book such as, publication year, the number of pages, circulations and so on. The option identified within move 3 is: Move 3. Option 3.1. Providing triple evaluation (structure, style, content). By utilizing this option, the Persian writers give their critical comments in terms of three aspect of the book and in this way, provide more comprehensive evaluation of the book.

On the other hand, only one step was identified in the English corpus which was absent in its Persian counterpart. This step which appears within the first move is: Move 1. Step 1.1. Bringing a special part of the book. In two cases, it was found that English writers gave introduction to the book by bringing a special part of its text and allow the reader to relate it to the topic of the book.

As it was mentioned, the other discrepancy lied in the identification of one final move in the Persian corpus which was absent in its English counterpart. Fourteen occurrences of this move (46%) in the Persian corpus lead us to consider it as ‘optional’ move. As suggested by Nwogu (1997) a move must occur in 50% or more to be labeled ‘obligatory’ and if the frequency of a move fall below 50%, it would be considered ‘optional’. There are three main steps which reveal Move 5. This move and its steps are as follows: Move 5: Presenting complementary information: Step 5.1.: Referring to the other books related to the topic; Step 5.2.: Providing author contact information; Step 5.3.: Outlining the references used in the review. By applying this move, the Persian writers seem to help readers to get some necessary information related to the book being reviewed and its author and also direct them to know the references used in the review. In comparison with Suarez and Moreno’s (2008) model of book review, there was a minor modification in the order of Steps within move 1. Unlike Suarez and Moreno’s (2008) study which identified the sub-function “Making topic generalization” as the forth one in move 1, this study found the relative location of this step in both corpora mostly after the Step “Defining the general topic of the book”. Furthermore, the option “Not recommending the book despite the indicated strengths” and option “Definitely not recommending the book” identified in the move four in the Suarez and Moreno’s (2008) study were not detected in any of the corpora of the present study, so they are deleted in the final extracted schema proposed for English and Persian book review. The moves and steps occurred with different frequencies within each corpus. The summaries of these frequencies have been depicted separately in figures 1 and 2 for the English and Persian corpora, respectively.

Figure1: Frequencies of steps and options in English book reviews

Figure 2: Frequencies of steps and options in Persian book reviews

In the following section, the comparison of moves and steps between two corpora are presented. The results of tests of significance are also reported to highlight the differences and similarities between each corresponding moves.

Results of comparison of moves and steps used in English and Persian book reviews

This section presents the contrastive results of the analysis of the book reviews in terms of moves, steps and options, carried out independently in the two corpora. Table 3 provides an absolute and relative frequency of each of these categories. Given the fact that the steps are not mutually exclusive, that is, a move can be realized by one or more steps, it is noticed that the sum of their frequencies in each move is higher than the total frequency of occurrence of its respective move, because these moves may contain one or more than one steps. So, the relative frequency of occurrence of steps within each move has been calculated in relation to 30, which is the total number of book reviews, i.e., the total possible frequency for each step. By contrast, as options are mutually exclusive and a move can be realized only by one option, their relative frequency has been calculated in relation to total frequency of occurrence of that move in each corpus.

Table 3: Frequency and percentage of moves, steps in English and Persian book review

As it was pointed out in previous section (Table 2), within move 1 “Introducing the book”, one step “Making the book specification” was identified in the Persian corpus which was absent in its English counterpart. Thirty percent occurrence of this step indicates that this step is relatively favored by the Persian book reviewers. On the other hand, the presence of the step “Bringing a special part of the book text” was found only in English corpus, but with quite low frequency (6.6%). The other Steps within move 1 were similar across two corpora. As can be seen in the table 3 except for Steps “Informing about the potential readership” and “Informing about the author”, all the other Steps present higher frequencies in the English corpus. The differences obtained in the frequencies of steps realizing move 1 across two corpora was compared by using chi-square test of significance (an appropriate non-parametric statistical test of significance). Table 4 shows the summary of the results of this test.

Table 4: Results of chi-square tests of English and Persian writers’ use of steps employed within move 1

In this case we see that the value of observed chi-square (X2 = 34.65) is significant at α level  (α = .01) with degrees of freedom of 7 (df = 7) indicating that there is a significant difference between English and Persian book reviewers in their use of steps employed within move 1. This is best shown by a chart bar, as displayed in figure 3.

Figure 3: Bar graph for the frequencies of steps within move 1 in English and Persian corpus

         As shown in table 3, Move 2 “Outlining the book”, the other mainly descriptive move in the book review genre, shows similar total frequencies of occurrence in both corpora which signify the importance and commonality of this move across the two corpora. But regarding the steps utilizing this move, Persian book reviewers use Step 2.1 “Providing a general overview of the organization of the book” considerably more frequently than English authors, whereas the low occurrence of Step 2.3 “Citing extra-text material” across two corpora, may be justified by considering the discipline of the study, sociology, in which the books being reviewed do not contain much extra materials such as graphs, tables, statistics and so on. Although the two corpora showed similar occurrences of Move 2 in two corpora (N = 30), the results of chi-square test revealed significant difference between English and Persian in terms of their use of the steps employed to structure this move. Table 5 shows the summary of the results of this test.

Table 5: Results of chi-square test of English and Persian writers’ use of steps employed within move 2

         In this case we see that the value of observed chi-square (X2 = 8.92) is significant at α level (α = .01) with degrees of freedom of 2 (df = 2) indicating that the obtained difference is significantly different. This is shown best by another chart bar, as displayed in Figure 4.

Figure 4: Bar graph for the frequencies of steps within move 2 in English and Persian corpora

         Move 3 “Highlighting parts of the book” and the only step by which it is realized “Providing focused evaluation” is used slightly more frequently by English book reviewers (28 vs 27). However, the identification of new option “Providing triple evaluation (structure, style, content)” in Persian corpus might suggest that this evaluative move seems to be more elaborated by Persian reviewers. As it was expected, the application of chi-square test showed that the differences in the occurrences of move 3 in the English and Persian corpora are not significant. X2 (1, N = 60) = 0.074, p = 0.78. Within move 4 “Providing closing evaluation of the book”, both the options 4.1 “Definitely recommending the book” and 4.2 “Recommending the book despite indicated shortcomings” reflect the English and Persian reviewers’ lower tendency to criticize books in a straightforward way in the concluding part of the review, although this is done differently in the two writing cultures. While Persian reviewers show a higher tendency to recommend books with no criticism through option 4.1 “Definitely recommending the book”, English-language reviewers tend to use more frequently option 4.2 “Recommending the book despite indicated shortcomings”. Despite this observed difference between English and Persian corpora in the realization of the forth move, the results of a chi-square test showed that the two corpora were not meaningfully different with respect to this move. Table 6 shows the summary of the results of this test.

Table 6: Results of chi-square test of English and Persian writers’ use of options employed within move 4

          In this case we see that the value of observed chi-square (X2 = 5.57) is not significant at α level (α = .01) with degrees of freedom of 4 (df = 4) indicating that there is no significant difference between these English and Persian writers in their use of options structuring move 4. The distribution of options within move 4 is best displayed in Figure 5.

Figure5: Bar graph for the frequencies of options within move 4 in English and Persian corpus

       Considering the above mentioned findings, the answer to the research question is as follows : There is a significant difference in the rhetorical structures of English and Persian book reviews in the field of sociology in terms of moves 1 and 2 but not with regard to moves 3 and 4 of Suarez and Moreno’s (2008) model.

5. Discussion Conclusion

          The analysis of data revealed that extracted generic model for English and Persian book reviews were closely similar except for few variations. It was found that English and Persian book reviewers applied all the four obligatory moves identified in Suarez and Moreno’s (2008) model; similar steps were also used to realize these obligatory moves and most of the moves were employed with relatively similar frequency across two corpora. However, there were differences in the frequency of steps realizing each move, the identification of a new move and step was also observed. Contrasting the rhetorical behavior of the two writing cultures under study, it was observed that while Persian book reviewers were more likely to open move 1 “Introducing the book” by specifying the general characteristics of the book such as number of pages, publication year, circulation and so on, through the step “Making the book specification”, English book reviewers, in the absence of this step, commonly opened move 1 by providing some background information related to the topic and defining the general topic of the book (Step 1.2). Furthermore, Persian writers seemed to have higher tendency to use the steps “Informing about the potential readership” and “Informing about the writer” within Move 1. On the other hand, the English writers seemed more likely to make topic generalization (Step 1.3) and give information about the writing technique used by the author (Step 1.7). Within Move 2, it was noticed that the Step “Providing an overview of the organization of the book” was much more frequent in the Persian than in the English corpus. The steps “Stating the topic of each chapter” and “Citing extra-text material” were employed with relatively similar frequency between two languages. Move 3 “Highlighting parts of the book” and the only step by which it is realized, “Providing focused evaluation”, can be said to be used slightly more frequently by English book reviewers. However, the identification of option “Providing triple evaluation” only in Persian book reviews might suggest that the Persian writers are more likely to provide more detailed evaluation of the book and include three aspects of the book in their evaluation structure, content, and style. Within Move 4, while the Persian writers showed a higher tendency to conclude their reviews through option 4.1 “Definitely recommending the book”, the English writers were more likely to close their reviews through option 4.2 “Recommending the book despite indicated shortcomings”.

         With regard to observed discrepancies in the rhetorical structure of the two corpuses, within move 1, the step “Making the book specification” was utilized by only English book reviewers, on the other hand, the step “Bringing the special part of the text” was present in the English corpus but not in its Persian counterpart. Within move 3, option “Providing triple evaluation” was present only in Persian book reviews. However, the major difference was related to the identification of the new optional move “Providing complementary information” at the end of Persian reviews which was absent in its English one, it was realized through various steps, Step 5.1 “Referring to the other books related to the topic”, Step 5.2 “Providing author contact information”, Step 5.3 “Outlining the references used in the review”.

          To provide empirical answer to the research question, several chi-square tests of significance were applied to the data. The results revealed that there were significant differences between the steps employed within move 1 and 2 in English and Persian book reviews. The observed differences within move 3 and 4 were not significant. The most evident reason underlying this macro-schematic similarity is the shared communicative purpose. This similarity validates a genre-based hypothesis which predicts similar discourse structures for the texts that are written for similar communicative purposes (Cheung, 2008). Like previous studies in this area (De Carvalho, 2001; Nicolaisen, 2002; Babaei & Ansary, 2004; Suarea & Moreno, 2008; Nodoushan & Montazeran, 2012), the results obtained from the present study indicates the primary role of the communicative purpose in structuring and organizing the ideas.

         Another point observed in the study was that writers in both languages do not strictly follow the same move and step sequences, as has been suggested by Suarez and Moreno’s (2008) framework for book reviews. It was noticed that the writers modified the sequences of steps in most reviews. The fusions of moves were also observed especially in move 2 and move 3 in both languages. This may be accounted for by the Nodoushan and Montazeran (2012) assertion:

A piece of writing requires cohesion and coherence to be considered a well-organized piece of discourse. Sequencing moves and steps linearly results in the production of a piece of writing which is mechanical and machine-made. So it can be pointed out that the writers avoid linear sequencing of moves and steps to have more dynamic and lively writing. (p. 22)

          Some studies have analyzed schematic description of move pattern of scholarly book reviews. The pioneer and the most comprehensive cross-disciplinary study on book review is Motta-Roth’s (1998) analyses of the organization of book reviews in the fields of Economic, Linguistic, and Chemistry. He found that book reviews in all disciplines shared a consistent pattern of what he called “rhetorical moves”. Working with 20 book reviews in each of the three disciplines, he distinguished four such moves, each comprised of one or more “sub-functions” which allow writers and readers to recognize different reviews as being exemplars of the same genre review across disciplines. Along the same line, Nicolaisen (2002) analyzed a corpus of library and information science books in English based on move analyses. He also found that all four of the moves recognized by Motta-Roth (1998) could be detected in his corpus. His study confirmed the hypothesis that there may be common patterns of rhetorical organization across disciplines.

          On the other hand, some other studies have identified some variations across academic disciplines and languages in the overall organization of book review. For instance, De Carvalho’s (2001) study on the rhetorical structure of English and Portuguese book reviews of literature showed that the four moves identified by Motta-Roth (1998) in her study of a corpus of Linguistics, Chemistry, and Economics could be reduced to three moves. Khunkitti (2005) analyzed the rhetorical patterns of book reviews in English fields. She investigated 59 book reviews extracted from three English journals: ESP journal, ELT journal, and Applied Linguistics. She used the previous study’s rhetorical pattern of book review in English fields. Her findings of the move and step order of this genre confirmed the results obtained from Motta-Roth (1998) study.

          As regards suggestions for future research, analyzing book review from cross-disciplinary approach would yield interesting variations different from ones the present study has shown in relation to the writing culture. So, a cross-disciplinary genre analysis on book reviews is suggested. Considering the significant role of sociolinguistics in discourse academy, research on book reviews in this area will be necessary in order to examine the relation of language and society in relation to this academic genre. So, a comparative analysis of writings of men and women in the genre of book review will provide valuable finding to gender studies.

6. Conclusion

           To contribute to cross-cultural studies on genre analysis, the present study intended to undertake a contrastive genre analysis of academic book reviews written by English and Persian book reviewers at the generic macro level. The importance of this particular genre is not hidden to scholars; reading the book reviews they can get a general picture of the book in a short time and consequently decide whether this is the book to read or not. However, the main objective of the present work was to compare/contrast the rhetorical structure of English and Persian academic book reviews. In order to tackle the objective, a corpus of 60 academic book reviews (30 in English and 30 in Persian) published between 2007 to 2020 in the field of sociology from well-known journals were randomly selected. With regard to the research question, all the book reviews in the corpus were submitted to move analysis following Suarez and Moreno’s (2008) rhetorical model of book review. The move-scheme Suarez and Moreno (2008) suggested for the book review genre has four obligatory moves (1. Introducing the book, 2. Outlining the book, 3. Highlighting the book, and 4. Providing conclusion of the book) and various steps subsumed under each move. Following this model, the book reviews were analyzed in terms of moves and steps. This analysis was employed twice probing into English and Persian corpora separately in an attempt to extract generic move structure models for each corpus. The particular findings of this research can be used in teaching and learning how to write academically in general and to write book reviews in particular. The results of the research can shed light on providing culture- and language –related models for this particular type of genre and be insightful for those interested in context-specific studies on discourse.