A Corpus-Based Contrastive Study Of Evaluative Language In English Research Papers Of Chinese And NSE Authors

Studies of evaluation have achieved ascendancy in the last decade, which has seen an expansion of the body of researches delving into the interpersonal dimension to academic communications. However, the plurality of studies of evaluation has resulted in a plethora of theories and provoked a debate over which theoretical approach offers an advantage in describing evaluation in academic discourses. The vast differences among these theoretical frameworks have made it difficult for empirical studies to produce results that can be compared with each other. Another problem that has been recognized in the present study is the notable lack of understanding of whether and how Chinese authors differ from Native-Speaker-of-English (NSE) authors in their use of evaluation. This study aims to overcome these two problems by identifying the major differences between the expressions of evaluation employed by Native-Speaker-of-Chinese (NSC) authors and those used by NSE authors in research papers of chemical engineering and developing a new approach to the description of evaluation in academic writings. The evaluative propositions and meanings that characterize research papers of chemical engineering have also been described for the purpose of improving the current understanding of this research genre.A corpus was built which consists of research papers (RPs) written in English by NSC and NSE authors working on topics in the field of chemical engineering. Categories based on the Appraisal theory, which represents a separating approach, and evaluative meanings proposed by a combining approach were incorporated into the coding scheme for evaluations in the corpus texts. The coding scheme also includes several other parameters which were used to categorize evaluations in terms of the entity evaluated, the polarity, explicitness and orientation of the evaluation. The multiple labels generated for each evaluative proposition according to this coding scheme were converted into in-text tags that can be recognized and processed by automatic concordancing programs. The features of evaluations in the corpus texts were then investigated to characterize the general proclivities of authors of RPs of chemical engineering regarding their choices of evaluative language. The two sub-corpora—RPs by NSC authors and RPs by NSE authors—were then compared with each other to reveal their differences in their choices of evaluative strategies and evaluative expressions. Finally, a contrastive keyword analysis was applied to the corpus texts to obtain information about the differences between the two sub-corpora in complementarity to the results achieved via statistical analyses.Results of this study have shown that the genre of RPs is characterized by distinctive evaluative meanings and propositions. The characterization of the genre partially depends on the description of evaluations in the different sections of the research paper. Complex interplays between evaluative propositions and meanings have been observed to emerge out of the use of evaluative lexis.Chinese authors and NSE authors have been shown to differ from each other in the evaluations they expressed in the corpus texts. Chinese authors have been convincingly shown to have a greater dependence on expressions of high commitment, which contract the heteroglossic space and require the solidarity between the writer and the reader. In addition, a smaller range of entities are evaluated in Chinese authors'RPs with the complexity of problems and the value of findings or solutions more often evaluated. It has been argued that these differences may be the outcomes of the interplay of several factors such as cultural differences, pedagogical traditions and language proficiency. From a cross-cultural perspective, Chinese authors'high commitment to propositions can be attributed to their solidarity with their readers and a collectivist cultural orientation. The narrower scope of evaluation in Chinese authors'RPs, which suggests their reluctance to express their evaluations, may be ascribable to an implicit style of writing which is typical of verbal communication Chinese.The approach to the description of evaluation developed for this study has been shown to render systematic and informative descriptions of evaluative propositions in academic discourses. It was suggested that the separating approach and the combining approach to the study of evaluation should be reconciled with each other and both offer valuable input into an eclectic approach as suggested in this study and that a theory of evaluation should be developed to account for entities in evaluative propositions.Finally, this paper pointed out that the differences between Chinese and NSE authors regarding their expressions of evaluation have pedagogical implications for the teaching of academic English in China. A more extensive discussion and examination of evaluation should be promoted in the English-for-Academic-Purposes (EAP) courses for Chinese writers.