Figure legends of scientific research articles: Rhetorical moves and phrase frames

Figure legends, descriptive statements accompanying a figure, are short yet important aspects of research articles, but they have almost escaped scrutiny in the literature. Drawing on a corpus of 1,190 figure legends in four science disciplines, this paper explores the structuring of figure legends in terms of rhetorical moves and the typical phrase frames that assist in realizing the communicative purposes of the moves. We identified two highly frequent moves in the figure legends that function to present titles of legends and define graphic items, two regular moves (i.e., account of statistical and experimental details) and three infrequent moves (i.e., result statement, reference of sources of data, and interpre-tation of results). We further found interesting variations in the use of phrase frames across moves, with the largest number in the move of defining graphic items. Additionally, each move was realized by varying structural and functional phrase frames, but overall, function-word and research-oriented types were the most common. This study adds to our understanding of figure legends and raises pedagogical implications for the teaching of science writing.(c) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.