Critical Stance And Evaluation In Chinese Students’ L2English And Anglo-american Dissertations

Academic discourse, ultimately structured for persuasive effect, representingdiscipline-specific modes of argument and involving interpersonal negotiations, iscontingent upon culture and individual authorial agency. On the basis of thisnewly-revealed nature of academic discourse, such terms as stance and evaluationhave been introduced. Evaluation in academic discourse is relatively a new field ofstudy and research on evaluation is still in its infancy. Study of academic discourse,emerging from academic writing, has not formed a relatively mature model or reachedcomplete consensus on the meaning of stance and evaluation, and comparison ofcritical stance and evaluation in Chinese L2English and Anglo-Americandissertations is still rare in literature.In this study, Hyland’s concepts of Proximity and Positioning are adopted toexplain the similarities and discrepancies between Chinese and Anglo-American Ph.D.candidates’ writing in English. These two concepts were developed to deal with therelationship between discipline and academic discourse: the former showing therelationship between self and the academic community, and the latter the relationshipbetween the writer and the message to be conveyed when the writer constructs his orher identity through different evaluative expressions.“Proximity” concerns theinteractive character of the discourse represented through the social and discursiveconventions of a discipline and the underlying power relations these conventions drawupon. It means using language to adopt a disciplinary voice to establish the writer assomeone competent to engage as an insider, thereby creating the potential forpositioning and agency through broadly agreed meanings and correspondences ofexpectations.“Positioning”, on the other hand, means adopting a point of view both tothe issues discussed in the text and to others who hold points of view on those issues,including social actors’ individual stances and evaluations towards what they discuss.Taking a stance and showing confidence indicate that the writer is a unique andindependent creator and that the writer takes a strong stance and owns authorship towards his viewpoint and discourse.On the basis of a brief review on critical stance and evaluation, a pilot study hasbeen conducted by using MICUSP (The Michigan Corpus of Upper-level StudentPapers2009). The pronouns I, myself, and me, checked to ensure they were used totake stance, are searched through MICUSP text to compare and contrast nativeEnglish speakers and non-native English speakers’ performance in sixteen disciplinedivisions. This pilot study serves as the testing of the author’s presumption thatstancetaking performances and evaluation are discipline-specific and culture-specific.This dissertation then analyzes the performances of Chinese junior scholarswriting in English and pinpoints the issues of critical stance and evaluation in theiracademic discourse. On the basis of literature review of critical stance and evaluation,and following the pilot study,12dissertations have been selected from Dissertations&Theses@CIC Institutions (Big Ten Universities) as a small personally-assembledcorpus of630,000words named DISCORPUS, comprising3Chinese and3Anglo-American dissertations from the discipline of English Language and Literature(henceforth ELL) and3Chinese and3Anglo-American dissertations from thediscipline of Civil Engineering (henceforth CE) submitted in the years1996through2012. The selection principle has been to make the Chinese L2English andAnglo-American dissertations as closely matched as possible on the topic and lengthof the dissertations. And the reference corpus is Hyland Corpus (2008) of1.4millionwords, comprising240expert research articles from8different fields. The researchtools for the quantitative part of analysis are the free multiplatform corpuslinguisticand data-driven learning software AntConc (Version3.3.5), statistical package for thesocial sciences SPSS (Version19.0), and Microsoft Office software Excel.By applying AntConc, Pearson Chi-square analysis and Fisher’s exact test inSPSS and Excel software, overt evaluative devices have been searched and comparedbetween the Chinese and Anglo-American dissertations and between ELL and CE inDISCORPUS. Instances of the overt evaluative expressions are evaluative verbs andmodal verbs (suggest, assume, argue, disagree, claim, should, must, may, can, andneed), evaluative adverbials (fortunately, unfortunately, interestingly, surprisingly, arguably, presumably, and unexpectedly), evaluative nouns (problem, difficulty,achievement, assumption, claim, failure, success, and challenge), evaluativeadjectives (unusual, strange, atypical, weird, odd, major, and minor), authorial selves(I, we, the author and the hortative let us/let’s), all of which reveal the critical stanceof the author to some extent. Less overt evaluation is also compared between Chineseand Anglo-American students and between ELL and CE by selective textual analysisand commentary. Furthermore, comparison of DISCORPUS data with the referencecorpus (Hyland Corpus) data has been conducted to reveal the differences between thejunior researchers and the mature researchers. Since collecting the same word, phraseor construction for the purposes of quantifying its frequency runs the risk of treatingas equivalent instances of the same linguistic object which in fact have quite differentand perhaps opposite evaluative valences in different discourse contexts, it is oftennecessary to go back to the text itself in certain context to do a textual analysis of theevaluative meaning of a term. Patterns of differences in meaning can only beidentified through close textual and interactional analysis of the occurrence oflinguistic constructions in their natural habitats in discourse in the contexts in whichthey are selected.The quantitative corpus analysis has been integrated with qualitative studies.Questionnaires containing10questions were distributed to130Ph.D. students at theUniversity of Michigan and90questionnaires were returned as valid for analysis. Thequalitative exploratory small-scale study is also augmented by10-minute insiderinformant interviews using ten open-ended semi-structured questions that wererecorded. The interviewees were six male and six female students in the Ph.D.programs at the University of Michigan. Focus group discussions were also conducted,including pertinent Chinese and Anglo-American Ph.D. students, the Ph.D.supervisors, and the author’s ELI (English Language Institute) colleagues at LSA(The College of Literature, Science and the Arts), the University of Michigan.As can be seen, in data collection and analysis for the present study, quantitativeanalyses of the corpus have been combined with such ethnographical methods asquestionnaires, interviews and focus group discussion. Such triangulation incorporates objective analysis and subjective reflection, promoting the reliability and validity ofthe study. Triangulation facilitates validity checks of hypotheses; it anchors findingsin more robust interpretations and explanations; and it allows the researcher torespond flexibly to unforeseen problems and aspects of the research.The major findings of the present quantitative and qualitative research are thefollowing:(1) There is significant disciplinary and cultural specificity in the Chinese L2English and Anglo-American students’ use of evaluative verbs and modal verbssuggest, assume, argue, disagree, claim, should, must, may, can and need (Asymp.Sig.(2-sided)=.000for both Pearson Chi-square tests). The Anglo-Americans preferclaim and assume; ELL has a wide variety of choices of the evaluative verbs andmodal verbs suggest, argue, disagree, claim, should, must, may, can, need. Incomparison to Anglo-American Ph.D. students, Chinese Ph.D. students overuse theevaluative modals can, may and should. And in comparison to disciplinary experts inHyland Corpus, the Chinese Ph.D. students underuse the evaluative verbs suggest,assume, argue and disagree.(2) There is not a significant disciplinary and cultural specificity in the ChineseL2English and Anglo-American students’ use of evaluative adverbials fortunately,unfortunately, interestingly, arguably, surprisingly, presumably and unexpectedly. Incomparison to the disciplinary experts in Hyland Corpus, the Chinese Ph.D. studentsunderuse these evaluative adverbials.(3) There is significant disciplinary and cultural specificity in the Chinese L2English and Anglo-American Ph.D. students’ use of evaluative nouns problem,difficulty, achievement, assumption, claim, failure, success and challenge (Asymp. Sig.(2-sided)=.000for both Pearson Chi-square tests). ELL routinely prefers difficulty,success, achievement and challenge while CE prefers problem, failure and assumption;the Chinese L2English Ph.D. students favor failure and problem but seldom chooseclaim or success.(4) There is not a significant cultural specificity in the Chinese L2English andAnglo-American Ph.D. students’ use of evaluative adjectives unusual, strange, atypical, weird and odd (Loglikehood value=1.02,<the critical value3.84). There isa significant cultural specificity in the Chinese L2English and Anglo-American Ph.D.students’ use of the evaluative adjectives major and minor (Exact Sig.(2-sided)=.000for Fisher’s exact test); however, there does not exist a significant disciplinaryspecificity (Exact Sig.(2-sided)=.781for Fisher’s exact test). In comparison to thedisciplinary experts in Hyland Corpus, the Chinese L2English Ph.D. studentsunderuse the evaluative adjective minor.(5) There is significant disciplinary and cultural specificity in the Chinese L2English and Anglo-American Ph.D. students’ use of the authorial selves I, let us, we(Asymp. Sig.(2-sided)=.000for both Pearson Chi-square tests).(6) In comparison to NS Anglo-American Ph.D. students, the NNS Chinese Ph.D.students underuse less overt evaluations (e.g. double negation, litotes, understatement,metaphor); in comparison to disciplinary experts, both Chinese and Anglo-AmericanPh.D. students underuse the less overt evaluations.The research results found should inform ESL/EAP/EFL/EIL pedagogy andfacilitate learning. In ESL/EAP/EFL/EIL writing teaching and learning, awareness ofcritical stancetaking and evaluation needs to be raised for Chinese beginner juniorresearchers and inductive learning needs to be advocated by application of data-drivencorpus. Apart from the role such micro factors as words, clauses and sentences mayplay in discourse, the macro factors need to be emphasized for the purpose oftransforming from “apprentice” to “expert”, thus gaining recognition and identity inthe academic community.