ABSTRACT
Bunton (2002) and Paltridge (2002) found that despite variation in the overall structuring of the thesis with the emergence of new ‘hybrid’ types (see Chapter 5), all the theses they examined had an introductory chapter. Our understandings of the structure and organization of the Introductions to theses draw on the research into journal article Introductions, primarily carried out by Swales (1990). Readers may be familiar with his Create a Research Space (CARS) framework. Introductory chapters have in fact probably been subjected to greater examination than other typical sections of the thesis genre (Bunton 2002; Dudley-Evans 1986). This may be because they are themselves shorter and therefore more amenable to analysis than the other typically much longer sections, but whatever the cause, there is more research upon which to draw when we look at thesis Introductions. This allows us to propose a framework for the typical structure of thesis Introductions (see Table 6.1).
