| Citation,as a distinguishing feature in academic writing,is a crucial indicator reflecting writers’ academic standard and writing quality.The previous studies on citation features mainly focus on investigating citation form,citation function,citation motivation,textual borrowing,factors and writer stance.However,most of the studies have discussed only one or two citation features,without linking all citation features and putting them together in a comprehensive framework,failing to understand the whole picture of writers’ citation features.This study therefore attempts to analyze four main citation features in master’s theses of English majors by adopting Ma Rong and Qin Xiaoqin’s(2015,2016)framework.In the present study,the corpus consisted of 80 master’s theses which were downloaded from CNKI.And all the theses were written by postgraduates of English majors from 2013 to2018.Only Literature Review,Methodology,and Results and Discussion of each thesis were reserved.With the aid of Software Ant Conc3.4.4’ s concordance function,the citations in the corpus were retrieved and the number of citations was counted.And then,based on the framework of Ma Rong and Qin Xiaoqin(2015,2016),the data were analyzed qualitatively to explore the citation features in the chosen theses from four aspects: citation form,textual borrowing,citation function and writer stance.Through analysis and discussion,the results of this study are as follows.Firstly,in the aspect of citation form,it was found that postgraduates used Integral-verb controlling citation(51.7%)most,followed by Non-integral citation(35.12%)and Integral-naming citation(13.18%).Also,Integral-verb controlling citation was dominant in the three sections of the theses,especially in the Literature Review(57.37%).The results indicated that postgraduates relied heavily on the “someone said” structure to cite texts in order to highlight the authority of cited authors.However,the dominance of Integral-verb controlling citation also suggested that postgraduates placed more weight on the cited authors than the information itself and ignored impersonality and objectivity of academic writing.Secondly,in the aspect of textual borrowing,the results showed that Summary(49.22%)had the highest frequency,followed by Paraphrase(20.41%)and Direct quotation(17.21%).Translation(9.7%)and Exact copy(3.46%)occurred sparsely.However,this study found that most of the Summary parts were at a lower level because postgraduates did not understand the content of a cited text,but only summarized a text from its abstract or title.Summary at a lower level mainly included three patterns:(1)“abstract” summary,which summarized several sentences in the abstract of a cited text by rewriting some words and slightly reformulating sentence structures;(2)“title” summary,which rewrote the title of a cited text by adding a subject and a reporting verb;(3)“formulaic” summary,which obtained relevant information of a cited text(e.g.,research methods,research subjects and research results)from its abstract,and then integrated these bits of information into one sentence.Thirdly,in the aspect of citation function,the most noticeable feature was the overuse of Attribution,which occupied a dominant position in Literature Review(54.63%),Methodology(38.39%),and Results and Discussion(42.36%).To a certain extent,this reflected that postgraduates lacked the ability to establish links between citations.They only presented the sources of the cited texts and listed them simply,but failed to pay attention to the internal relationship between them.Although Attribution was the most frequently used function in the three sections of master’s theses,there were some differences of non-attribution functions in different sections of the theses.The functions of Source/Origin and Links/Comparison among non-attribution functions were dominant in Literature Review and Results and Discussion,while the dominant function in Methodology was Adoption/Application.Finally,in the aspect of writer stance,the study found that Acknowledged citation(71.3%)had the highest frequency,followed by Endorsed citation(17.47%).Distanced citation(9.22%)and Contested citation(2.11%)occurred sparsely.These results indicated that postgraduates attempted to maintain neutral and objective attitudes toward the cited texts.On the other hand,it also reflected the postgraduates to a certain extent lacked critical thinking.Besides,it was noted that the realizations of Endorsed citation in master’s theses displayed one inadequacy,that is,postgraduates sometimes tended to acclaim the cited authors instead of praising the cited studies.The results of this study can effectively help postgraduates identify their inadequacies ofcitation practice so as to take corresponding measures to improve their academic writing skills.Besides,the findings also can provide some suggestions for the teaching of academic writing.Firstly,teachers need to provide more explicit instruction on citation practice to help postgraduates overcome their weaknesses in citation.The present study revealed that there was an unbalanced distribution of citation form and the overuse of Attribution in citation function in master’s theses.In this case,teachers need to give postgraduates explicit guidance to use citation form in a relatively well-proportioned way and learn to establish various links among the cited texts rather than only indicate the sources of the cited texts.Secondly,academic writing classrooms are supposed to be equipped with more exercises to help postgraduates have a better understanding of citation features.This suggestion comes from the findings that most of the Summary parts were at a lower level in the aspect of textual borrowing and postgraduates still had difficulties in summarizing texts even though they had learned the relevant knowledge in class.Finally,comprehensive textbooks and handbooks about citation are supposed to be available to postgraduates.The textbooks and handbooks need to give postgraduates specific advice and exercises rather than simply list some citation examples. |
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