A Contrastive Study Of English Abstracts In Journal Papers Based On Appraisal Theory

An abstract can be regarded as a mini-version of an academic paper, which isthe core of one paper. With the ever-increasing international academic exchanges,abstract, as an important genre, has become a growing field of study in linguistics.Based on the framework of Appraisal Theory, the present study is intended to probeinto the distribution of Appraisal Resources in native speaker and non-native speakerdatabases, aiming to find out the similarities and differences between them in termsof Attitude, Engagement and Graduation, and the underlying reasons for thesimilarities and differences, and then to obtain some enlightenment on writing ofabstract.This thesis adopts corpus-based approach and contrastive analysis approach,combining quantitative and qualitative approaches in the study. In the process ofanalysis, numbers and statistics are obtained and shown in tables and figures todemonstrate frequencies and show the significance of the differences. By usingUAM Corpus Tool and SPSS, the present study carries out quantitative analysis ofthe statistics between native speaker and non-native speaker databases. Then, thequalitative approach is adopted to explain the underlying reasons and significantdifferences for the discrepancies in the abstracts between native speaker andnon-native speaker databases.The databases of this study consist of 60 English abstracts, which are all fromcore linguistics journals. The native speaker database is made up of 30 abstractsselected randomly from Applied Linguistics, English Language Teaching Journal andJournal of Pragmatics. And the other database of 30 abstracts is selected fromChinese core journals (Foreign Language Teaching, Foreign Language Teaching andResearch, and Foreign Language Teaching Theory and Practice). All the 60 abstractswere published in 2011.The results of a detailed contrastive analysis of the databases reveal that thereare some considerable similarities and remarkable differences in the use of AppraisalResources between two databases. Generally speaking, both native speaker and non-native speaker databases adopt a considerable variation of Appraisal Resourcesto construct abstracts. However, there are unequal distributions of the threesub-systems of Appraisal Theory, and among them Attitude Resource has the highestshare. Specifically, as for Attitude, the abstract writers employ a lot of AppreciationResources to evaluate the valuation of studies. However, native speakers tend toemploy more Affect Resources, while non-native speakers tend to employ moreJudgement Resources due to the cultural differences. As for Engagement, theabstract writers employ heteroglossic discourse to introduce Engagement Resources,thus develop writer-reader potential interaction. The two databases use moreContraction Resources, but native speakers tend to directly intervene in abstracts byadopting much more Pronounce Resources while non-native speakers adopt moreEndorse Resources to express their opinions implicitly. As for Graduation, theyemploy much more Force Resources to raise or lower Attitude Resources andEngagement Resources. Surprisingly, non-native speakers employ more GraduationResources than native speakers. It reveals that non-native speakers have a preferencein command of Graduation.This thesis has provided new insights into abstracts by a contrastive study. It notonly serves to help EFL learners to understand and use Appraisal Resources better,but also provides some suggestions for the teaching of English academic writing.