This article is an attempt to compare English dentistry research abstracts (RAs) published in an international medical journal and those in an Iranian one. 50 abstracts were randomly sampled and their rhetorical moves and linguistic features were analyzed. The generic structures applied in each of the two groups of data were examined for detecting any possible differences under the consequence of L1 transfer. The judgments were done by considering the proposed models of the move structures in the genre considered. Both optional and obligatory moves were categorized for comparison. The analysis of the data revealed interesting variation disparities across the two writing styles of the authors in question. The findings indicated that the concept of genre is a culture specific phenomenon. The writings by EAP Iranians displayed the conventions governing the organizational patterns which made their abstracts different considerably from the native English writings.
Keywords: Dentistry Research Abstracts, Genre Analysis, Linguistic Features, Rhetorical Moves
