The macrostructure of a scientific abstract

In the era of globalization due to the growing need to publish the results of scientific research in international journals, there is an increasing interest in the scientific abstract as a genre of a scientific text. A macrostructure plays a special role in the structures of any scientific text. It seems that the macrostructure of a scientific abstract being a global form of the organization of the material has its own characteristics, which require a detailed study. The purpose of the article is to review the works devoted to the study of the macrostructure of a scientific abstract, to identify the existing problems, and to define the prospects for the research. The authors clarify such concepts as “the structure of a discourse” and “a scientific discourse”, analyze the existing approaches to describing the semantic structure of a discourse in general and the structure of a scientific discourse. In particular, the integral approach developed by T.N. Khomutova is applied, as it seems to give the most detailed and comprehensive representation of the structure of a scientific discourse. Within the framework of this approach, the scientific text is analyzed in four quadrants (cognitive, linguistic, cultural and social). The authors detect two ways to interpret the term “macrostructure”: either as a part of the semantic structure (the level of the deep text organization), or as a part of the grammatical structure (the level of the surface organization). In the latter sense, the term “macrostructure” is a synonym to the term “superstructure”. The analysis of foreign and Russian studies on the topic of the macrostructure of a scientific abstract is conducted. Foreign scientists tend to understand the macrostructure as a part of the grammatical structure, which is the composition of a text. The main model for the analysis of the macrostructure of a scientific abstract in foreign studies is the IMRD model by J. Swales (Introduction - Methods - Results - Discussion). The sections of Methods and Results are considered to be obligatory for a scientific abstract. As part of the semantic structure, the macrostructure of a scientific text can be universally described as a “problem-solution” structure. The authors of the article conclude that the research into the macrostructure of the Russian-language abstract is insufficient and outlines the prospects for the further research.