Person Deixis In MA Theses A Cross-cultural Study

In recent years, various authors have shown that person deixis plays a key role in writer-reader interaction in academic writing (e.g., research articles, student reports, Ph.D. dissertation etc.). However, MA theses have not received much attention, not to mention cross-cultural studies on the use of person deixis in MA theses.This study is based on a corpus which consists of two sub-corpora (10English MA theses written by Chinese EFL MA candidates, and10written by AES MA candidates). All the theses are in the field of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics and finished during the academic year from2007to2010. The thesis makes a comparative and contrastive study on the use of person deixis (self-mention and reader pronoun) between the two sub-corpora. Specific focus is placed on frequency and the distribution and functions of person deixis in the Introduction, Results/Discussion, and Conclusion section. The possible factors which prompt students'use of person deixis are discussed. The study yields the following findings:Concerning self-mention, its frequency is much lower in the theses written by Chinese EFL MA candidates than in those written by AES MA candidates. In particular, the first person singular pronoun I is rarely used. The influence of collectivism culture is most likely to account for the avoidance of using I. Self-mention also shows substantial differences across different sections in both corpora, including the distribution and preferred patterns of use. As regards the reader pronoun, there is not a great disparity on the distribution and function between the two sub-corpora. The results manifest that Chinese EFL MA candidates are respectively unaware of the conventionalized use of phraseological patterns and sentence patterns involving the first person to perform specific functions in MA theses, especially the cognitive verbs, and if-clause. Chinese EFL MA candidates' relatively limited knowledge of vocabulary and rhetorical repertoire of the English language may account for this result.The major findings of this cross-cultural study have implications for MA theses writing and the teaching of MA theses writing. As for Chinese EFL MA candidates, they can get more insights into how to present themselves and engage with readers with the appropriate use of person deixis in MA theses. As for teachers, different consciousness-raising activities are needed to develop MA candidates'awareness of employing person deixis to achieve writer-reader interaction in academic writing.