A Study Of The Developmental Features Of Stance Bundles In Chinese L2 Academic Writing

Stance bundles,as a kind of lexical bundles,function to express the writers’ attitudes,opinions or feelings towards a proposition.It is widely accepted that academic writing is a communicative activity between writers and readers.Hence,using stance bundles appropriately can help writers indicate their relationship with readers and attitudes to the research subject so as to construct evaluative meaning.In the past,linguists tend to investigate the differences in using stance bundles between native speakers and Chinese L2 learners and stance bundles in different registers or disciplines.Findings of previous studies show that most Chinese L2 learners misuse stance bundles and have difficulty in appropriately expressing their stance in academic writing.However,previous studies on exploring the reasons of these difficulties were not discussed deeply and the study of the developmental features of stance bundles in Chinese L2 learners’ academic writing is still in its infancy.Therefore,based on the theoretical framework of phraseology,this thesis explores the developmental features of stance bundles in Chinese L2 learners’ academic writing.It has profound theoretical and pedagogical significance.Three questions are to be explored accordingly in the current study:(1)What are the developmental features of the types and frequencies of stance bundles in Chinese L2 learners’ bachelor theses,master theses and doctoral dissertations?(2)What are the developmental features of stance bundles’ structural patterns among Chinese L2 learners’ bachelor theses,master theses and doctoral dissertations?(3)What are the developmental features of stance bundles’ functions among Chinese L2 learners’ bachelor theses,master theses and doctoral dissertations?In order to answer the research questions,corpus-based approach is adopted.Research corpus includes the Bachelor Theses corpus(BT),Master Theses corpus(MT)and the Doctoral Dissertation corpus(DD).The reference corpus is Research Article corpus(RA).With the help of Antconc 3.5.0.0,Log-likelihood Ratio Calculator and BFSU Collocator 1.0,the author retrieved and analyzed stance bundles in four corpora and investigated the developmental features of stance bundles in Chinese L2 academic writing in the aspects of type and frequency,structure and function.The results show that,generally speaking,the competence of using stance bundles by Chinese L2 learners has improved.Undergraduates and postgraduates do not use as well as Ph D students in the richness of types of stance bundles.In terms of the frequencies of stance bundles,there is a dynamic decrease from the undergraduate stage to doctoral stage,but no statistically significant difference was found between BT and MT.However,Ph D students use significantly less stance bundles than postgraduate students.As for the structural patterns,in general,the use of verb phrase fragments by student learners has gone through a trend of increase first,and then decrease.In terms of dependent clause fragments,there is no statistically difference between undergraduates and postgraduates,whereas Ph D students significantly use a greater number of dependent clause fragments than postgraduates.As for noun phrase fragments and prepositional phrase fragments,there is a steady decrease in frequency.In terms of function,students overuse epistemic stance bundles,ability and possibility bundles as well as evaluation bundles.In addition,they underuse hedges,obligation and directive bundles and intention/volition bundles.The possible contributing reason to the development of using stance bundles are the differences of student writers’ academic writing experience,the amount of literature reading and disciplinary knowledge.The results of this study can not only help expand the exploration of stance bundles,but also unravel the developmental regularities of stance bundles in Chinese L2 academic writing.At the same time,it provides guidance for the teaching of Chinese L2 academic writing.