A Contrastive Study Of The Appraisal Resources Of English And Chinese Research Article Introductions

Research article introduction (RAI), as an integral part of research article (RA), plays a crucially important role in bridging the gap between the intended reader's knowledge base and the research article. In other words, RAI functions to illustrate the goals of RA, delineate current capacities and problems of the topic, and finally provide solutions and criteria of evaluation for reference. The present study explores the contrast of generic structure of English RAI (ERAI) and Chinese RAI (CRAI) in terms of Swales'CARS (create a research space) model, based on which it then turns to the interrogation of the choices of Appraisal resources and the distributive potential of these resources in different moves of RAI genre across English and Chinese languages under the framework of Appraisal theory.After the analytical approach to twenty ERAI and twenty CRAI texts selected randomly from eight international and domestic leading journals in the field of linguistics, we identify six communicative functionalities of RAI, and discover two new generic variants in Move 2 that are a bit different from the cyclicity of Move 2 proposed by Swales (1990:158). Besides, both ERAI and CRAI texts are basically consistent with CARS model.On the basis of generic structure, the present thesis goes further to interrogate the selection of evaluative resources and their distributive potential of ERAI and CRAI from the perspective of Appraisal theory. The upshots released from the statistical figures and analytical explication can be summarized as follows:(1) between Attitude and Engagement resources, ERAI uses more Attitude than Engagement, whereas CRAI uses fewer Attitude than Engagement; (2) under the heading of Attitude, positive resources exceed negative ones, and Appreciation resources account for the largest in both ERAI and CRAI; within Appreciation, both English and Chinese RA writers have preference for Valuation resources, even so, English writers still pay certain attention to Reaction and Composition resources but their Chinese counterparts primarily hinge on Valuation; (3) under the dimension of Engagement, both ERAI and CRAI contain more Intra-vocalization than Extra-vocalization resources; (4) under the semantics of Graduation, both ERAI and CRAI have more Force than Focus, more Raise than Lower; most Graduation resources are allocated for grading Engagement and Appreciation in both ERAI and CRAI; on the other hand, the total number of Graduation resources in ERAI is by far higher than that in CRAI, and there is no Focus resource in CRAI; (5) those non-attitudinal resources adjusted by Graduation can evoke Attitude semantics, especially the semantics of social Valuation; (6) from the perspective of the generic structures of RAI, most Appreciation resources in ERAI are applied to Move 1, while those in CRAI are mainly deployed in Move 2; in ERAI, the frequency tendency of Extra-vocalization is similar to that of Appreciation, however, in CRAI the representation of Intra-vocalization accompanies the tendency of Appreciation.The present study also reveals the social and cultural factors behind the RAI discourse through a systematical contrastive analysis of Appraisal resources between English and Chinese based on the generic structure of RAI.The purpose of the present thesis, founded on the comprehensive contrastive study, is aimed at a better understanding of the interpersonal relationships between RA writers and putative readers as well as providing some constructive suggestions for EAP teaching, and more importantly, for Chinese academic writers, encompassing expert and student writers, to improve their writing skills so as to meet the requirements of international journals and promote their awareness of international academic participation.