Critical Speech Acts In Ma Thesis Abstracts By Chinese Writers In Applied Linguistics: A Generic Comparative Analysis

This study aims at a comparative analysis of the rhetorical strategies used torealize the communicative purposes of academic criticism (AC) in MA thesis abstracts(TAs) written by Chinese writers with reference to those by their native counterparts.Two English-language sub-corpora, each including40abstracts contained in MAthesis in the area of applied linguistics, were examined at the macro and micro levelsin terms of the generic structures and rhetorical choices on the basis of Swales’(1990,2004) IMRD or CARS model, and Burgess and Fagan’s (2002) taxonomy on ACstrategies respectively. The results indicate a higher frequency of occurrence of ACamong Chinese writers, which can be attributed to the preference towards the CARSmodel. Besides, the interactions between the generic structures and AC strategies, aswell as the nature of the targets of criticism were identified. These findings provide,theoretically, a cross-cultural viewpoint of AC strategies in TAs by Chinese writers,which have not received as much attention as the research article and its othercomponents. Equal importance has given to the pedagogical implications in pairedChinese and English abstract writing and translation. Further studies are suggested onthe verification of genre-based analysis; the gradation of hedging strategies; and thecomplexity between abstract writing and translating.