A Contrastive Genre Analysis Of English And Chinese Textiile Research Article Introductions

The past forty years have witnessed great interest in genre analysis theory in the community of scholars. Great attention is given to all sections of the research articles (RAs), especially the introduction part. Recent trend of the RA introduction researches is that scholars try to find out the cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural variations between introductions composed by authors of different disciplines and cultural backgrounds.In this thesis,50pairs of textile RA introductions written respectively by international and Chinese scholars are randomly collected from ISI and CNKI. At the macro-structure level, the analysis is carried out in the framework of CARS model (1990)(Movel-Move2-Move3). The results show that the total numbers of moves and steps identified in Dl (international data set) outnumber those in D2(Chinese data set). The M1-M2-M3pattern is the main move pattern in both data sets and other patterns like M1-M3-M2and M3-M2-M1can also be found. At the micro-structure level, the analysis is conducted with focuses on such linguistic features as words, voices and tenses. It is found that scholars of D1tend to use modal auxiliary verbs, passive voice and first pronouns more often than scholars of D2. Concerning the verb tenses, the simple present is the most welcomed one in D1. However, deeply influenced by Chinese culture, the Chinese scholars usually avoid making strong research claims to save face and their expressions have shown a relative lack of explicitness; The Chinese scholars’less use of highlighting the value of their own work is aimed to show their modesty.The study compares the generic patterns and linguistic features of English RA introductions with Chinese RA introductions, the findings of which can help scholars to be aware of the cultural variations manifested in academic writing, enhancing their ability in research article composition and communication in the academic community.