A Contrastive Study Of Authorial References In English Research Articles By L1Writers And Chinese L2Writers

Authorial reference as an important component of metadiscourse is a powerfulrhetorical device for constructing interpersonality in research articles (RA). In presentstudy, interpersonality refers to the balance between subjectivity construction andobjectivity construction.Numerous studies on interactive metadiscourse elements such as attitude markers,boosters, engagement markers, hedges and self-mentions have been conducted toinvestigate the subjectivity construction in RAs. And objectivity construction researches inRAs mainly focus on passive construction, nominalization from syntactic-semantic andpragmatic dimension. However, issue on balance of subjectivity and objectivityconstruction in English RAs has received less attention. Moreover, the way to make theeffective interaction between writers and readers by keeping balance between subjectivityand objectivity in RAs remains highly controversial. Based on the Hyland‘s MetadiscourseTheory, the present study, with authorial references as the start point, aims to investigatehow L1and Chinese L2writers seek balance between construction of subjectivity and thatof objectivity in RAs in the field of Applied Linguistics.Twenty-nine single-authored RAs were selected from international journal of AppliedLinguistics, Language Teaching Research and from Chinese national journal of AppliedLinguistics, Teaching English in China-CELEA Journal for each corpus to construct L1corpus with205,102words and L2corpus with115,433words. Tagging was based onclose context and cotext analysis from two dimensions i.e. linguistic forms and discoursefunctions according to taxonomy of previous study（Molino，2010）.By quantitative analysis on frequency, proportion of personal and impersonalauthorial references according to discourse functions, it was found that:1) generally L1writers prefer subjective interpersonal strategy whereas Chinese L2writers favor objectiveinterpersonal strategy in RAs;2) L1and Chinese L2writers share similar principles inrealizing most of discourse functions. In realizing the functions of announcing the goals,assessing the strengths and limitations, elaborating arguments, concluding, statingassumptions, both L1and Chinese L2writers choose subjective interpersonal strategy. In realizing the functions of explaining procedures, referring to the text, illustrating data, theyselect objective interpersonal strategy. Exceptions exist in realizing the discourse functionsof stating results and providing definitional classifications where L1writers favorsubjective interpersonal strategy whereas Chinese L2writers prefer objective interpersonalstrategy;3) difference lies in degree of authorial intrusion into and authorial distance fromthe text. In constructing subjectivity, L1writers choose more powerful personal authorialreferences to intrude into the text than Chinese L2writers. In constructing objectivity,Chinese L2writers employ more conserve impersonal authorial references than L1writers.The present research not only furthers the study on the practices of L1writers andChinese L2writers regarding authorial reference in RAs but also provides pedagogicalsuggestions for Chinese L2writers on RA writing.