Date of Graduation

2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MS

College

Reed College of Media

Department

Reed College of Media

Committee Chair

Steve Urbanski

Committee Co-Chair

Julia Fraustino

Committee Member

Elizabeth Oppe

Committee Member

Nathalie Singh-Corcoran

Abstract

This study is an endeavor to investigate the textual linguistic factors that lead to successful grant proposals. Grant proposals have different sections. The focus was on the abstracts of grant proposals. The abstract is the first most piece read by the funding agency. There are many important contextual and situational conditions that directly affect the winning of the funds. This current study aims at the linguistic aspects of the abstracts. Twenty abstracts, chosen from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) website, were used as unit samples for the analysis. The coding units were the sentences existed in these texts. The researcher used Swales (1990) CARS model to carry out the data analysis. There were six variables used represented by the moves of this model. Due to the unique characteristics of the abstracts, some modifications were done to the model to match the nature of this genre. There were many findings, but the most significant were the order of the moves that was different from the research article introductions used by Swale's model and the focus on the aims and the significance of the grant proposal. It is expected that these linguistic features would be fed into a computer program to be used as a preliminary indicator of success for the grant writers.

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