A Contrastive Study Of Textual Rhetorical Characteristics Between Chinese And American English Expositive Texts

Recently corpus linguistics has become a key research field in the linguistic circle.Reviewing current studies,there are some important academic achievements in the study of English learner corpus by means of interlanguage contrastive method and contrastive rhetoric analysis.However,these studies have not fully traced back their theoretical origins;and just made simple analyses of listing out the writing features of English learners without considering the multidimensional reasons behind the features;focused mainly on lexical or grammatical level while lacking comprehensive explorations into textual structure and pragmatic function;and also failed in in-depth discussing the implications of English learners' feature investigations.Under such circumstance,the present study intends to conduct a contrastive analysis of textual rhetorical features of Chinese and American English expositive texts between Chinese English learners and English native speakers of U.S.A.on the basis of Rhetorical Structure Theory,attempting to explore the similarities and differences between the two types of texts as well as the analysis of the discourse style and structural features of the two types of texts revealed.Therefore,the research is of great theoretical and practical significance for current discourse analysis and English writing teaching.Adopted by a hybrid method of qualitative and qualitative research methods,the whole research integrates the theoretical basis of Rhetorical Structure Theory,the methodology of contrastive rhetoric analysis,and investigation,explanation of textual rhetorical features between Chinese and American English expositive texts,and theoretical reflection of Rhetorical Structure Theory into one unified framework,achieving "Five-in-one".So it can more systematically and comprehensively carry out the study of the similarities and differences of textual rhetorical features of Chinese and American English expositive texts between Chinese English learners and English native speakers of U.S.A.The paper aims to answer the.following four research questions:(1)Are there any differences in the overall discourse rhetorical features between Chinese and American English expositive texts?What functional features of rhetorical relations do they present?(2)Are there any differences in the macro level of discourse rhetorical features between Chinese and American English expositive texts?What are their specific features?(3)Are there any differences in the intermediate level of discourse rhetorical features between Chinese and American English expositive texts?What functional characteristics of rhetorical relations do they present?(4)Are there any differences in the micro level of discourse rhetorical features between Chinese and American English expositive texts?What functional features of rhetorical relations do they present?The study finds:(1)Altogether,Chinese learners' text applies more types of rhetorical relations,more frequency of nuclear-satellite relations and the total relations than American text.Functionally,both of them use ideational,interpersonal and textual relations,and are highly frequent in ideational relations.American text is much more frequent in ideational relations than Chinese learners' text,indicating the former tends to be informative.While Chinese learners' text is much more frequent in interpersonal relations than American text because of frequent application of attribution,comment,evaluation,motivation,solutionhood,rhetorical question relations,etc.,indicating the former tends to be persuasive.(2)In the macro rhetorical relations of holistic structure,Chinese learners' text focuses on evidence relation,while American text is focused on preparation relation in the title part.Both of them emphasize on evidence relation in the introduction part,and conjunction relation in the body part to analyze the similarities as well as differences between Chinese and American films.In the conclusion part,Chinese learners' text centers on motivation relation,whereas American text emphasizes on summary relation.(3)In the intermediate rhetorical relations of holistic structure,Chinese learners' text applies more types of relations,more frequency of nuclear-satellite relations and total relations,but slightly less frequency of multi-nucleur relations than American text.Functionally,both of them apply ideational relations,interpersonal relations and textual relations,and are highly frequent in ideational relations.American text is much more frequent in ideational relations than Chinese learners' text,while the latter is much more frequent in interpersonal relations than the former.Chinese learners' text prefers non-volitional causes,non-volitional result,parallelism,solutionhood,comment,evaluation,motivation,conclusion relations and so on,but American text prefers comparison,elaboration- general-specific,and summary relations and so on.So by comparison,American text pays more attention to the presentation of objective facts,and is more informative,whereas Chinese learners' text centers more on the interaction of the readers,and expresses more subjective attitudes,views and inferences to increase the persuasiveness of English expositive text.(4)In micro rhetorical relations of holistic structure,the two types of texts apply three kinds of relations:nucleus-satellite relations,embedded relations and multinucleur relations.But the relation types,the frequency of nuclear-satellite relations and total relations of Chinese learners' text are more than those of American text,but the latter use more frequency of embedded relations.Functionally,both of them use ideational,interpersonal and textual relations,and are highly frequent in ideational relations.American text is much more frequent in ideational relations,but much less frequent in interpersonal relations than Chinese learners' text,indicating that the former tends to be more factual and informative whereas the latter tends to be more interpersonal and persuasive.Chinese learners'text prefers parallelism relation,attribution relation,etc.,while American text prefers comparison relation,elaboration-general-specific relation,etc.Moreover,this paper analyzes the reasons of the feature differences between Chinese and American English expositive texts from multidimensional interpretive perspective of cultural value,mainly including five aspects:the value differences of American and Chinese social cognition,readers' expectation,education,philosophical cognition and interpersonal value orientation,etc.On the whole,the study has theoretical development and application value to carry out discourse study from the micro,intermediate and micro level of textual rhetoric.It verifies the application of Rhetorical Structure Theory as the theoretical framework to study the text style from micro,intermediate and macro level and explore the similarities and differences of textual rhetorical characteristics of between Chinese and American English expositive texts.However,due to the particularity of this study corpus,further research is still needed to solve some problems,and the problems of RST also lead to the deficiency in the practical application of RST in expositive texts.So this study points out four concrete problems in RST,and put forward corresponding solutions.Therefore,this study has important application value in the following four areas:the study of textual rhetoric,English writing teaching,teaching material design,writing test and correction and so on.And it is of great practical significance for teachers to make better use of teaching methods and strategies,promote the positive interaction between the teachers and students,and constantly improve the writing level of English learners.