| From the perspective of contrastive analysis, this thesis is intended to make an investigation into literature reviews (LRs for short) in English M.A. theses by English native speakers (hereinafter referred to as NSs and ELRs) and those by Chinese learners of English (hereinafter referred to as ESLs and CLRs). Based on Swales' and Hasan's generic structure analysis system and Hyland's taxonomy framework for metadiscourse, the present study attempts to delve into characteristics of LRs, aiming to find out similarities and differences between CLRs and ELRs in terms of generic structure and metadiscourse and also the underlying reasons for the similarities and differences, and thus to obtain some enlightenment on the writing of LRs.Descriptive, qualitative approaches are combined in the study. The descriptive approach is used to generalize the generic structure of LRs in English theses and types of metadiscoursal devices, providing evidence for the later analysis of similarities and differences. While in this process, numbers and statistics (system of SPSS 11.5) will be applied to indicate frequencies and prove the significance of the differences. The qualitative approach is mainly used to identify the major underlying reasons.The corpus of the study consists of 30 LRs. The corpus of ELRs is made up of 15 LRs (approximately 120,000 words) selected randomly from ProQuest Digital Dissertations (PQDD); likewise 15 CLRs (approximately 43,000 words) are selected from Full-text Database of M.A. Theses of GDUFS (Guangdong University of Foreign Studies) and all of them are written by students graduated in 2006 and 2007 from School of International Business English of GDUFS. In addition, all the LRs are on linguistics and applied linguistics.After a detailed analysis of data, it is found that CLRs and ELRs differ both in the organizational elements and in the use of metadiscourse, though they also enjoy some common points. The greatest similarity in structure lies in that both corpora are found out to have similar major components including RP (Actual Review of Previous Studies) and CV (Making Critical Views), which contribute much to communicative purposes of LRs. And similarities in the use of metadiscourse mainly include: 1) interactive metadiscoursal devices are employed more frequently than interactional devices in both the two corpora; 2) Transitions and evidential are applied more than other subcategories while engagement markers are seldom used. Differences in the macro-structure exist primarily in the occurrence and frequency of some optional elements. At the linguistic level, NSs tend to use more boosters, attitude markers and hedges than Chinese ESLs while Chinese students employ more code glosses and self-mentions than NSs. It is further demonstrated that these similarities and differences are closely related with factors as communicative goals, cultural influences and academic demands.The present two-level study may add to the existing work on genre theory and metadiscourse and may help gain a deeper insight into the nature of LRs, and, may be useful in throwing light on composing and writing LRs in English theses.
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