A Genre Centered Analysis Of English Scientific Research Article Abstracts From The Perspective Of Appraisal System

This thesis focuses on the rhetorical structure and emotional features implied in Scientific RA abstract in English. The successful circulation of a Scientific RA lies to a great extent in its abstract. As a matter of fact, the abstract is usually regarded as the most important component of a Scientific RA owing to its unique functions. Therefore, relevant knowledge about the rhetorical structure and emotional features of English scientific abstracts will be helpful for its composing, giving access to a most effective way for the international exchange of science and technology, hence to extend the influence of scientific and technological achievements in the world. However, how can an author effectively organize a well-written abstract of specific disciplines still remains as a difficult problem, especially for those non-native English writers who have not been well informed. So this study is aimed at finding out the whole structure of the scientific English RA abstracts so as to come up with some techniques for the preparation of a well-organized abstract. By providing the lexical items in the Appraisal System among scientific RAs, we hope that this thesis might be of help for those who specialize in the field of scientific technology and for whom the writing of a scientific RA abstract remains a headache.The current study investigates the specific emotional lexical items by adopting rhetorical structure from both the macro perspective and Appraisal System theory from micro perspective. First, a corpus of 60 English Scientific RA abstracts, all of them are from six prestigious publications available in Elsevier-SDOL and Blackwell synergy in the discipline of Linguistics, Medicine and Economy, are randomly selected and set as samples data for analysis. Detailed analysis is carried out in two main stages. In the first stage, we summarize the rhetorical structure of scientific English RA abstracts based on IMRD move theory. In the second stage, we carry out a more detailed analysis of the attitude and opinion of the author in scientific English RA abstracts in terms of the three subtypes of Appraisal System derived from Halliday's interpersonal metafunction theory.Regarding analysis results of the rhetorical structure, seven moves are found in 60 English Scientific RA abstract, namely, Situating the research, Introduction, Purpose, Methods, Results, Conclusion and Discussion. As pointed out by the graph below, the specific component is not the same in three different disciplines. Medicine, in particular, is the most completed one judging from the proportion.On the basis of the three sub-types of Appraisal System analysis, we divide the data into three parts according to the disciplines and then analyze them one by one. Firstly, it is important to work out the lexical items under the guidance of seven moves in rhetorical structure. At a closer look at the finding in all the data analysis, the following lexical items presenting the emotional feeling of author have been concluded and suggested as a reference for learners in English Scientific RA abstract writing: "significant, successful, effective, important, the finding suggests that, the result shows that, the article argues that, although, may" and so on. All those emotional lexical items are available for each move in rhetorical structure. Alongside, the study also looks at the issue of the comparison in Appraisal System between the three different disciplines. Both similarity and diversity are presented in the findings. The result observed comes from several causes, for instance, the style of individual discipline, the writing format of specific fields. It is the unique demand that brings the diversity to the three different disciplines. This study is of practical significance, as it provided some specific guidance and suggestions for English Scientific RA abstract writing, particularly Linguistics, Medicine and Economy these three disciplines. At the same time, it offers help for learners and readers to effectively understand an abstract and grasp the emotion implied in an abstract.What is new in this study is that firstly, although rhetorical structure analysis is not a new approach for RA study, most of the previous study employed contrastive study between Chinese and English RA abstract in the same discipline, in present study, we changed the angle to analyze the scientific English RA abstracts consist of three different disciplines, Linguistics, Medicine and Economy.Secondly, most of the previous study preferred to initially analyze the rhetorical structure from macro perspectives, then analyzed linguistics features, structure unit or thematic organization of the data from micro perspectives. But the present study adopted a new point of view by adopting Appraisal System from micro perspectives.Finally, according to data collection, the present study included three disciplines. By analyzing in terms of rhetorical structure and Appraisal System, we can not only figure out rhetorical structure and Appraisal features of scientific RA abstracts, but we can also discover rhetorical structure and Appraisal features of each discipline which may help the relative learners to write a good and qualified RA abstract.