In the past fifteen years, the concept of genre has been the focus of studies in the field of applied linguistics. It has become a popular framework for analyzing the form and function of non-literary discourse such as the Research Article (RA). RA introductions and abstracts are two genres that have long been the interest of genre analysts. However, few studies have compared the related genres in different cultures and disciplines. Based on previous research, this thesis aims to find out the variation of the relationships between RA introductions and abstracts in two languages of English and Chinese within the two disciplines of applied linguistics and economics. To this end, the structural units of the texts and their linguistic features have been analyzed comparatively. The results show that in applied linguistics, the English abstracts are more similar to the introductions in both rhetorical structure and linguistic forms than are the Chinese abstracts to its introductions. In the discipline of economics, however, the Chinese abstracts are more similar to the introductions than are the English abstracts to the introductions. The variations are somewhat opposite in the two disciplines. An analysis of the genre set in the two languages shows that there is no general conclusion on the disciplinary variation in English, and that there is a greater degree of similarity between economics abstracts and introductions than between applied linguistics introductions and abstracts in Chinese. The findings of the investigation are significant not only for genre theory but also for EAP pedagogy.