| Besides Halliday and Hasan (2001), many linguists developed cohesion theory theoretically and practically, and they inspired many linguistic learners to conduct researches on cohesion. However, with a review of previous studies on cohesion and EST, there is no research associating cohesion with introductions of EST papers. Therefore, the concern of this dissertation is to analyze cohesive features of introductions of EST papers.English for science and technology (EST for short) reflects linguistic features of science and technology. Multifunctional Grasslands in a Changing World collects EST papers on grassland and rangeland into two volumes, with Prelude and three themes-theme A, theme B and theme C. In the three themes, there are unabridged papers and many bridged papers, and56papers are unabridged in all. In this dissertation, the56introductions from the unabridged papers comprise the corpus; Introductions of the papers in Prelude and in three themes are respectively regarded as four sub-corpora accordingly.In such a quantitative research, the procedures of statistic-data collection and data analyses are correlated with cohesion and EST. Based on cohesion theory, this dissertation resorts to AntConc to collect data of words concerned with cohesive devices as well as Microsoft Word for punctuations, with subsequently classification in the corpus.Due to some restricts in the process of data collection in this corpus, there are several cohesive devices conformable to this dissertation, which are reference, substitution, conjunction and repetition. Accordingly, the concerned data are classified into tables, compared and analyzed to calculate proportions of each cohesive device in the corpus.By means of Chi-square calculator, frequencies of the cohesive devices in four sub-corpora are compared to analyze the distinctions.Accordingly, on account of comparative analyses, this dissertation concludes the cohesive features in the corpus:First, because both conjunctive words and punctuations as conjunction are frequently used, conjunction is supposed to show highest frequency occurrences in the corpus. And the frequency occurrences of reference ranks the second according to its proportions. However, pronominals and substitution are seldom used.Second, besides ":" and ";", other punctuations denotes cohesive structures in EST papers, such as "(",")","/"and "-". They are applied widely to denote cohesive relations in the corpus, and they are more plain and explicit than linguistic description, fit for EST explicitness style. Furthermore, the punctuations denote cohesive relations of the structures in the two sides of them.Third, by Chi-square calculator, a series of comparisons indicate cohesive features in sub-corpora do not accord all those with stylistic features of EST, probably due to varying degrees of non-EST factors in sub-corpora. According to the data, the cohesive devices in theme C are overused than in the others; they are underused in theme B than in any of the others.Finally, repetition in this corpus serves for high frequently used non-functional words to indicate that:high frequently used non-functional words in every theme conform to their theme, distinguishing themes and summarizing the features of the theme. Therefore, the words are identified as keywords in the theme, which assist to analyze the non-impersonal degree of the Introductions in every theme.In a consequence, by means of scientific data processing, analyses and comparison, this dissertation sums up the cohesive features in the corpus, providing definite data and proportions for more comparative analyses in the future. The cohesive features are valuable and convincing references for more researches and studies on cohesion in the future. In addition, the scientific and manifest methodology in this research gives an advantageous example. |
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