This article is part of a study which analyzed the textual genre `research article introduction' from the perspective of rhetorical-discursive analysis. The theoretical-methodological principles which guided this research were: English for specific purposes, reading and textual genre. This research was a focused description (LARSEN-FREEMAN; LONG, 1991), and the corpususedwas composed by research article introductions from the ANPAD English test (ANPAD is a test for postgraduate courses). This article presents the linguistic-discursive analysis of the introductions that comprise the corpusused in the studyof the original study. The results showed that the linguistic evidence not always corresponded to a specific rhetorical movement (SWALES, 1990) in the introductions. The study had a pedagogical purpose because it highlighted the linguistic marks and the verbal structures that really occur in this genre.
research article introduction; linguistic-discursive analysis; English for specific purposes
