A Comparative Genre Analysis Of English M.a. Thesis Abstracts In Linguistics By Students In Xinjiang And English Native Speakers

In the past two decades, there have been more and more studies on academic paper from the perspective of genre analysis in the field of linguistics. However, a review of relevant previous genre studies indicates that there have been few genre researches on abstracts of M.A. theses, let alone studies on the generic structure and linguistic features of English M.A. thesis abstracts in linguistics written by postgraduate students from universities in Xinjiang.Two corpora containing one hundred M.A. thesis abstracts– the corpus of English M.A. thesis abstracts in linguistics by English native speakers (CNS) and the corpus of English M.A. thesis abstracts in linguistics by Xinjiang postgraduates (CXP) were established. Bruce's (1983) Introduction– Method– Results– Discussions Model and Swales'(1990) Create a Research Space (CARS) Model were adopted to investigate generic structure and some particular linguistic features such as grammatical tenses, voices and first person pronouns of thesis abstracts in linguistics. The present study aims to investigate the generic structure and some particular linguistic features of thesis abstracts in linguistics and explore the similarities and differences between thesis abstracts written by English native authors and Xinjiang postgraduate writers by adopting English for Specific Purposes genre analysis approach. Thus, it is hoped that this study may be helpful for thesis abstracts writing, especially for those who are postgraduate students in Xinjiang.The research findings show that thesis abstracts by English native speakers and by Xinjiang postgraduates are in consistence with the Introduction– Method– Results– Discussions (IMRD) pattern in terms of macro-structure to certain extent but with some deviations. The thesis abstracts written by English native speakers tend to be more complete and complex than those by Xinjiang postgraduates. Besides, it is found that Introduction move and Result move are obligatory for thesis abstracts by English native authors as opposed to the Introduction move by Xinjiang postgraduates. In addition, Xinjiang postgraduate writers opt to employ Step 1A: Outlining purposes to realize the communicative function of Introduction move while English native authors are likely to choose Step 1B: Announcing present research. The choice of steps is influenced by communicative functions of Introduction move. Comparatively speaking, Xinjiang postgraduate writers are likely to omit Discussion move, where they just present their research findings objectively with few discussions on the results in depth or reflecting the meaning of the results. Concerning linguistic features, the simple present is the most frequent tense. Tense choice is greatly influenced by communicative purposes of a certain move. In terms of voices, actives prevail over passives in all rhetorical moves, except in Method move where passives predominate. With regard to the first person pronouns, the frequency is very low. English native writers use more first person pronouns with more variety than Xinjiang postgraduates.Based on the results and discussion, the present study makes a tentative attempt to offer a pattern for the generic structure of English thesis abstracts in linguistics for reference.It is hoped that the findings in the present study may enrich Xinjiang postgraduate students'knowledge of this particular academic genre both in terms of generic structure and linguistic features. Furthermore, the study may be helpful for Xinjiang postgraduates to read and write English M.A. thesis abstracts in linguistics.