This study presents an analysis of abstracts from research articles found in Linguistics and Translation Studies journals. It first presents some theoretical background on discourse community and genre analysis, then it shows the analysis carried out on 18 abstracts, 6 written in English, 6 in Portuguese and 6 being their translations into English. The analysis aims at verifying whether the rhetorical patterns of organizations and the moves found in abstracts coincide with those proposed by Swales (1993) in his study of research articles and introductions. Besides, it intends to identify the verb tenses and voice preferably used in this kind of text as well as mechanisms used to indicate presence or absence of the writer in the text. The analysis reveals that the rhetorical patterns and some moves proposed by Swales are found in abstracts, though not in the same order. It also shows a high occurrence of present simple tense and active voice in all moves and passive voice only occasionally. It argues that the absence of the writer is a distinctive feature of scientific discourse and it is obtained by means of passive voice and typical statements used as resources to avoid the use of personal pronouns.
