Table 1 Emergent themes of Arabic...

Table 1

Emergent themes of Arabic academic rhetorical heritage in STEM writing

Theme (rhetorical feature)	Description	Illustrative participant quote
Context-Before-Claim	A strong preference for establishing a broad philosophical, historical, or methodological context before presenting the main argument or finding. This is seen as necessary for a complete and respectful argument	“In our tradition, you must first show your respect for the knowledge that came before. You cannot just state your idea as if it appeared from nothing. You build the house before you reveal the treasure inside.” (Participant 7)
Elaboration as Eloquence	The belief that thorough elaboration and lexical variety demonstrate deep engagement with the subject matter and intellectual seriousness, influenced by the tradition of Balagha (eloquence)	“To write only the bare facts feels … unscholarly. It is like serving a guest a plain piece of meat with no spices. The beauty of the argument is in its development.” (Participant 15)
Inductive Reasoning	A tendency to structure arguments so that evidence leads to a conclusion, rather than stating the conclusion first and then supporting it. The reader is taken on a journey of discovery with the author	“My logic is: here is the problem, here are the steps I took, here is what I observed, and therefore, here is my conclusion. My advisor wants me to put the ‘therefore’ part at the very beginning. It feels like starting a story with the ending.” (Participant 22)

Theme (rhetorical feature)	Description	Illustrative participant quote
Context-Before-Claim	A strong preference for establishing a broad philosophical, historical, or methodological context before presenting the main argument or finding. This is seen as necessary for a complete and respectful argument	“In our tradition, you must first show your respect for the knowledge that came before. You cannot just state your idea as if it appeared from nothing. You build the house before you reveal the treasure inside.” (Participant 7)
Elaboration as Eloquence	The belief that thorough elaboration and lexical variety demonstrate deep engagement with the subject matter and intellectual seriousness, influenced by the tradition of Balagha (eloquence)	“To write only the bare facts feels … unscholarly. It is like serving a guest a plain piece of meat with no spices. The beauty of the argument is in its development.” (Participant 15)
Inductive Reasoning	A tendency to structure arguments so that evidence leads to a conclusion, rather than stating the conclusion first and then supporting it. The reader is taken on a journey of discovery with the author	“My logic is: here is the problem, here are the steps I took, here is what I observed, and therefore, here is my conclusion. My advisor wants me to put the ‘therefore’ part at the very beginning. It feels like starting a story with the ending.” (Participant 22)

Note(s): Commentary to add after the table

“These findings empirically validate the features of Arabic academic rhetoric theorized in Section 2. Participants' descriptions of ‘respect,’ ‘beauty,’ and logical ‘journeys’ directly correspond to the principles of Balagha, Iltifat, and inductive organization. This confirms that these are not archaic concepts but living, influential rhetorical values that multilingual writers carry into their disciplinary writing.”

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