Contrast Relation In Academic Journal Articles

The contrast relation, as one kind of clause relation, is a cognitive comparison between two adjoining clauses or sentences which indicates their differences or contraries to one's expectations. Contrast relations are often fulfilled by various contrastive discourse markers (CDMs), such as but, however, yet, while, despite, although, etc. Contrast relations are divided into different sub-categories by different scholars according to different criteria. Halliday and Hasan (1976) propose four types of contrast relation, the adversative, the contrastive, the corrective and the dismissive contrast relation. This thesis takes Halliday and Hasan's classification as the guide in analysing contrast relation, dividing it into concessive contrast relation, contrastive contrast relation ( including direct contrast, comparative and avowal contrast relation), corrective contrast relation (including meaning correction and wording correction) and dismissive relation.As one of the components of discourse markers (DMs), CDMs are the tools and mediums to investigate contrast relation. Quite a large amount of research work has been conducted on DMs and CDMs, but not much was associated with clause relations and less still with the features of contrast relations in a particular writing genre.Therefore, the present paper explores contrast relations by studying the CDMs academic journal articles. 20 academic journal articles are selected as the database for the investigation, with 10 articles of social science and 10 of natural science. By analysing the semantic features and frequency distribution of the CDMs, contrast relations are identified and classified. The frequency distribution of various contrast relations is finally obtained so as to summarize the features of contrast relations used in academic journal articles.The research results show that there are altogether 724 places of contrast relation occurrences in the 20 academic journal articles, which suggests that contrast relation is a very common clause relation in academic writing. The distribution of the four types of contrast relation shows that the contrastive and concessive relations are the most widely used contrast relation in academic writing, accounting for more than 90% of all contrast relations concerned, while corrective and dismissive contrast relations are rarely employed in the articles.The social science articles and natural science articles use fairly the same number of contrast relation. However, the most distinctive difference lies in their use of comparative contrast relation.The analysis and research results of the present thesis also suggest some ways and advice to CDMs and contrast relation teaching and learning for EFL learners and English teachers.