How Do Introductions Interact With Conclusions In English And Chinese Phd Theses? A Corpus-Based Contrastive Genre And Metadiscourse Analysis

To illuminate possible difficulties faced by Chinese graduates in producing acceptable English and Chinese PhD theses and to suggest ways in which they might deal with these difficulties, this study aims to explore how native speakers of Chinese (NSC), native speakers of English (NSE) and Chinese non-native speakers of English (CNSE) students raise and answer questions in the Introduction and Conclusion parts of their doctoral theses through the manipulation of rhetorical structures and metadiscourse realizations. The approach for the present study is basically contrastive, by conducting a corpus-based genre analysis on a sample of30NSC and30CNSE PhD thesis Introductions and Conclusions from CNKI PhD database, and30NSE ones from ProQuest PhD database. The90PhD theses are randomly selected from the discipline of education.Our results show that there are some rhetorical differences in raising and answering questions across the three corpora. Firstly, Introductions interact with Conclusions more explicitly in both NSE and CNSE PhD theses than in NSC ones. And secondly, when evaluating their own research, CNSE PhD theses employ more obvious interaction between the Introductions and Conclusions than NSE and NSC ones.After investigating the interactional structures in the Introductions and Conclusions, this study goes on to examine how metadiscourse helps achieve interactions in the interactional structures across the three corpora. Results indicate that the extent of the metadiscourse involvement varies from different interactional structures and across different corpora. Firstly, NSC PhD thesis Introductions and Conclusions are more reader-responsible and CNSE and NSE ones are more writer-responsible. Secondly, PhD theses in the three corpora tend to employ different strategies to make their claims in the interactional structures. CNSE and NSE PhD thesis writers usually negotiate their claims with their readers, whereas NSC PhD thesis writers often strengthen their claims by persuading readers to accept them. Thirdly, PhD theses in the three corpora show different degrees of awareness of the readers’engagement and processing ability. NSC and CNSE PhD thesis writers often highlight the presence of their readers in the theses to engage them as discourse participants.The findings reveal that NSE PhD Introductions and Conclusions interact differently from NSC and CNSE ones, which suggests that language plays a significant role in its preference for certain rhetorical structures and metadiscourse strategies. Furthermore, the realization of interactions through the application of metadiscourse in the interactional structures is also closely linked to the writing culture. These results suggest that NSC PhD Introductions should interact more explicitly with the Conclusions in the discipline of education. Furthermore, in order to establish a credible writer identity, NSC and CNSE PhD theses should employ less attitude and engagement markers in the interactional structures, and need to conform to the discourse conventions of the discipline.