A Corpus-based Contrastive Study Of Discourse Construction Of China's And International English Scientific Journal Papers

As a commonly used language in the international academic community, English is widely employed in scientific and technological fields. English scientific journal has become one of the main channels for communicating and advancing scientific knowledge among scholars world-wide and so it is an important way for Chinese and international researchers to communicate their findings. With China's opening to the outside world and the rapid development of science and technology and the wider communication with the international academic community, increasing numbers of English scientific journals are issued in China. However, according to the Comprehensive Catalog of Chinese Core Journals, among more than 190 English scientific journals published in China, only 36 are indexed by some well-known retrieval systems such as Science Citation Index (SCI) and Engineering Index(EI), which partly shows that the China's English scientific journals are behind the international ones.Although the creativity and ingenuity are the key factors as to whether a paper will be accepted or rejected, the level of English is also a major factor. So, apart from the academic levels, one of the main causes is that the Chinese writers haven't met the language requirements of international English scientific journals. Besides the lexical and grammatical errors, we believe that there are differences in discourse constructions of the abstract, introduction and conclusion sections, which may present difficulties and obstacles in understanding and interpretation of the papers. In the present dissertation, we try to find these differences which haven't been studied and discussed systematically before.This research aims to study the similarities and differences in discourse constructions of the abstract, introduction and conclusion sections in China's and international English scientific journal papers in terms of length features, moves, and thematic structures and tries to find out the possible causes.With a corpus-based approach, six separate corpora in three pairs of 100 English abstracts (27,054 words in total), 60 English introductions (67,826 words in total) and 100 English conclusions(37,142 words in total)from both China's English scientific journals and authoritative international English scientific journals are collected respectively. As a whole, this dissertation is a combination of quantitative and qualitative study. Total paper length, Move length, Move model, Move frequency, theme distribution and thematic progression are variables for study. Generally, in each abstract, introduction and conclusion section, the total number of a certain variable is counted, with its proportion and frequency being calculated. In order to further dig into the similarities and differences between China's English scientific journal papers and international ones, Independent-samples T test is used to verify whether statistical difference is significant enough to distinguish the data between them. As to such variables as analysis of the moves and the most frequent words and phrases as themes, exemplification and observation are employed. As to the causes of differences in discourse construction, the qualitative discussion is applied.Research findings suggest that both similarities and differences exist in the discourse construction of China's and international English scientific journal papers.As to abstract section, in terms of length feature, significant differences occur in the abstract length and sentence number, with the abstracts by native speakers of English outnumbering those by Chinese learners of English in the aspects of total abstract length, total sentence number as well as average sentence length. As for the move analysis, considerable differences exist in Move 2(Presenting the research)and Move 4 (Summarizing the results), with no statistical differences in other moves. With regard to the thematic structure, unmarked themes between the two corpora statistically differ from each other. There are differences between abstracts by Chinese learners of English and native speakers of English in the most frequently used themes in different categories. About the pattern of thematic progression, abstracts in China's and international English scientific journals both have frequent use of linear pattern, with comparatively less parallel pattern in China's English scientific journals.As to introduction section, there are also similarities and differences between China's and international English scientific journals. In terms of length features, significant differences occur in the total paper length and introduction length. Both papers and introduction sections in China's English journals are shorter than those in international English journals. However, the two percentages of introductions to the whole paper has no significant differences. This indicates that the authors in these two samples pay the same attention to the section of introduction. Secondly, on the level of moves, there is no significant difference, while on the level of steps, some differences exist. The significant differences mainly appear in the step of reviewing items of previous research in Move 1, outlining purposes, announcing principal findings and indicating journal paper structure in Move 3. With regard to the thematic structure, there are no significant differences in numbers of the marked, unmarked and conjunctive themes. There are also differences between two corpora in the most frequently used themes in different categories. About the pattern of thematic progression, similar to that in the abstracts, linear pattern is frequently used in both China's and international English scientific journals, with comparatively less parallel pattern in the introductions of China's English scientific journals.As to conclusion section, we found that differences exist in the paper length, introduction length, length of move 1(Summarizing the study), move 2(Contributions of the study)and move 4(Recommending future study), frequency of unmarked theme, selection of marked theme and conjunctive theme and thematic progression. Our major findings in this section lie in the move differences in the two corpora. Chinese writers focus on the contribution of their studies, while English writers pay more attention to the studies themselves and their implications for the future studies. With regard to the thematic structure, unmarked themes between the two corpora statistically differ from each other as well. There are also differences in terms of the most frequent words or phrases as themes. As to the thematic progression, contrary to the findings in abstract and introduction sections, Chinese writers use parallel pattern most in conclusions while English writers use linear pattern most.The innovations of the dissertation are as follows. We have set up a corpus for English scientific journal papers. In light of the systemic functional grammar and genre analysis and by quantitative study and qualitative analysis, we have provided a relatively comprehensive description of the discoursal similarities and differences of the abstract, introduction and conclusion sections in China's and international English scientific journal papers. This kind of corpus-based and comprehensive qualitative study is not commonly found at home and abroad.We have identified the differences in the discourse construction of China's and international English scientific journal papers and explored the possible causes of the differences, facilitating the construction of the discourse features and models for China's English scientific journal papers and thus filling in the gap.We have modified the move structures of the introduction section and established a move model for the conclusion section of English scientific journal papers, which is a useful supplement to the genre analysis of English scientific journal papers.We have also pointed out the deficiencies in discourse construction of China's English scientific journal papers. It is hoped to provide the guidance for the Chinese researchers in the writing journal papers and to help them get their papers published in important international scientific journals. It has also practical implications for the editing of China's English scientific journals in a more international-standard-approaching way and the enhancement of the levels of China's English scientific journals.We should point out that although the present research is on the discourse construction of China's and international English scientific journal papers, it has a wider and more important implication. To arouse the interest and attention and promote a deeper and systematic research into discourse analysis is our original intention and where the value and significance of the present research lie. Furthermore, the contrastive study of the discourse construction of China's and international English scientific journal papers will enrich text linguistics and provide an instance for establishing the theories and models of contrastive text linguistics, thus making a useful supplement and contribution to the theories of text linguistics.