Case reports in dental medicine: A genre analysis

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the communicative purposes and move structure of Case Reports in Dental Medicine (CRDMs) and to determine the similarities and differences between them and Medical Case Reports (MCRs). The corpus for this study consisted of 20 CRDMs published in the following peer-reviewed journals: Clinical Case Reports and Case Reports in Dentistry in the period between 2016 and 2019. The structural move analysis method developed by Swales (1981, 1990, 2004) was applied to identify the moves and steps in Case Presentation sections, as well as the communicative purposes of whole CRDMs. The Lancsbox 4.5. concordance tool was used to explore the concepts of NOVELTY and RARITY associated with the communicative purposes of MCRs to investigate whether they are associated with CRDMs as well. The correlation between the text length and the communicative purposes of CRDMs is also examined. This study contributes to genre research by providing a detailed analysis of the communicative purposes of CRDMs and by presenting the findings of the structural move analysis of their Case Presentation sections.