| This study aims to investigate cross-cultural differences in reporting verbs used in English-language theses in applied linguistics written by Chinese writers and their counterparts in English-speaking countries. Two separate sub-corpora, including20MA theses in the field of applied linguistics written by writers from Mainland Chinese universities and20by writers in American and Canadian universities respectively, were examined in terms of semantic classification, distribution, and frequency of reporting verbs in the two corpora based on Thomas and Hawes’(1997) classification of reporting verbs. The results indicate a higher frequency of occurrence of reporting verbs in the literature review chapter, which can be attributed to the reason that in the part of literature review, which mainly introduces the research or ideas of previous scholars in a particular research field, reporting verbs are most needed. And the findings also reveal that the frequency of reporting verbs in Chinese sub-corpus is higher than that in English sub-corpus, while from the perspective of variety of reporting verbs, Chinese writers use reporting verbs much less diversely than native writers do. Besides, the phenomenon that Chinese writers used slightly more experimental verbs and cognition verbs than American writers do, but they use fewer discourse verbs. As for tense choices, equal importance was attached to the simple present tense in the two corpora, while Chinese writers preferred the simple past tense. These findings provide, theoretically, a cross-cultural viewpoint of the use of reporting verbs in masters’theses by Chinese writers and American writers in the field of applied linguistics. Equal importance has been given to the pedagogical implications of the study for academic writing instruction in China. Further studies are suggested to focus on different academic genres or writer with different English proficiency levels. |
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