A Study Of The Use And Features Of Metadiscourse In English Abstracts By Chinese Computer Science Postgraduates

Metadiscourse refers to the linguistic resources which help organize the text,guide the readers to the preferred interpretation of the text,express the author’s attitudes and realize the interaction between the author and readers.Recent years have witnessed an increase of studies on metadiscourse,either from the theoretical perspective or empirical perspective.The empirical studies abroad mainly focused on the features of metadiscourse use in English or other languages by writers from different cultural backgrounds,with the metadiscourse use by native English writers as a reference.Previous studies acknowledged that cultural difference is an important factor which influences metadiscourse use in academic writing.There are some other empirical studies abroad focused on the differences in metadiscourse use in different disciplines.These researches argued that disciplinary difference can lead to the difference in metadiscourse use in academic writing.As to the domestic studies on metadiscourse,the subjects are limited within the undergraduates or the journals in linguistics.Postgraduates,especially non-English major postgraduates,with a higher demand of publishing articles or writing term papers in English,are rarely taken as the subjects of research.The review of the researches on abstracts also shows that little attention has been paid to metadiscourse use in abstracts.Abstract can function as an independent type of discourse and inform the readers the main content of the article.And the inappropriate use of metadiscourse in abstract can lead to misunderstanding and even rejection by the readers.In order to fill the research gap,this study attempts to explore the features of metadiscourse use in dissertation abstracts by Chinese Computer Science postgraduates,through the comparison with metadiscourse use in research article abstracts by expert writers.Besides,the study tries to present the developmental features of metadiscourse use through the comparison between the metadiscourse use by master students and doctoral students.This study mainly addresses the following questions: 1)How do expert writers and Chinese postgraduates in Computer Science employ metadiscourse in academic abstracts writing? Are there any similarities and differences between the two corpora of abstracts? If any,what are they and the possible reasons? 2)What are the developmental features in the use of metadiscourse by Chinese master students and PhD candidates majoring in Computer Science? Are there any similarities and differences between the two sub-corpora of abstracts? If any,what are they and the possible reasons? 3)How do expert writers and Chinese postgraduates in Computer Science realize the functions of metadiscourse in specific contexts?The author first compiles three corpora with 50 abstracts of master theses,50 abstracts of doctoral theses and 50 abstracts of research articles by expert writers in Computer Science.Then based on Hyland’s interpersonal model of metadiscourse,the occurrences of metadiscourse in each corpus are calculated with the help of retrieval software AntConc.Due to the context-depending nature of metadiscourse,manual work is necessary to rule out the items which do not function as metadiscourse.After that,Chi-Square Calculator is employed to examine whether statistically significant differences exist across the corpora.A detailed textual analysis is also adopted to explore the realization of the functions of metadiscourse in specific contexts.The results show that there do exist similarities and differences across the corpora of abstracts by Chinese novice writers including master students and doctoral students and abstracts by expert writers.1)As to the similarities between expert writers and Chinese novice writers,both of them employ a large number of metadiscourse in their abstracts;the most frequently used metadiscoursal items by them are transitions;hedges and boosters are used in a balanced way by them;attitude markers,evidentials,endophoric markers and engagement markers are the less frequently used items by both expert writers and Chinese novice writers.The similarities mentioned above can be explained from the perspectives of the purposes and generic features of academic abstract,the nature of the discipline chosen in this study.2)With regard to the differences in metadiscourse use by expert writers and Chinese novice writers,expert writers use considerably more metadiscourse than Chinese novice writers,especially the interactional resources.Additionally,expert writers use interactive and interactional resources in a largely balanced way while Chinese novice writers overuse interactive resources compared with interactional resources used in their abstracts.And there exist statistically significant differences in the use of frame markers,endophoric markers,evidentials,code glosses,boosters and self mentions.The plausible reasons for these differences might be discussed from the perspectives of influence from traditional culture and writing conventions,the length of abstracts in dissertations and research articles from journals,writing proficiency,instruction in EAP(English for Academic Purposes)class on the use of some metadiscoursal items,and authorial identity.3)As to the similarities in metadiscourse use by master students and doctoral students,metadiscourse is widely used in each sub-corpus with the predominance of interactive resources.Also,the hierarchies of the categories are generally the same in abstracts written by master students and doctoral students.These similarities can be explained by the nature of academic abstract and the similar instruction on postgraduates about EAP writing.4)As for the differences between metadiscourse use by master students and doctoral students,the doctoral students use substantially more metadiscourse,especially more interactional resources than master students.In addition,doctoral students use more code glosses,hedges and boosters than their master counterparts.Thus it can be seen that doctoral students are closer to expert writers in terms of metadiscourse use.These differences can be discussed from the perspectives of influence of rhetorical patterns of L1 RA(research article)writing,writing proficiency and authorial identity.The current investigation describes the features of metadiscourse use by Chinese postgraduates,and it can help EFL(English as a Foreign Language)writers in China to have a better understanding of the functions of metadiscourse.In this way the study is meaningful as it can offer some implications for the teaching of academic English writing in China and help students to employ metadiscourse in a flexible and skilled way.