A Corpus-based Study On English Introduction Of Universities Of China,Britain And Thailand

As known to all, English is an international language and introduction of a university has its corresponding English version which makes it an important way in introducing the university to foreign audience. However, different countries show differences in their English versions of university introductions which may lead to differences in the effectiveness of introducing themselves. Therefore, this thesis will build up a small comparable corpus comprised of totally90English introductions of90universities from China, Britain and Thailand. These introductions are collected from the official websites of these universities. By combining a quantitative method and a qualitative method, this thesis aims at exploring the differences of the three sets of texts in vocabulary, collocation and subjects and tries to find out the reasons leading to these differences.This thesis is made up of five parts, namely, introduction, literature review, research design, analysis of the three sub-corpora, and conclusion. Among these parts, analysis of the three sub-corpora is the focus of this study which aims at answering the following three questions:1) As the original text in English, is British sub-corpus higher in its type/token ratio and standardized type/token ratio than those of Chinese sub-corpus and Thai sub-corpus? Why?2) Among the top30high-frequency words of the word lists of the three sub-corpora, can function words be found? If the answer is sure, then what can this point out? Are there any similar or common content words? If the answer is positive, then what are the differences of these words in their usages, collocates and subjects?3) With the British sub-corpus as the reference corpus and the other two as the observed corpora, can any similar or common words be found on the extremes of the two keyword lists? If there are such words, then what are the differences in their usages, collocates and subjects?Based on the above questions and analyses, this study draws to the conclusions that:1) the British sub-corpus is higher in its type/token ratio and standardized type/token ratio than those of the Chinese and Thai sub-corpora, which arrives at the point that the original text is higher in lexical density than that of the translated text;2) among the top30high-frequency words of the three word lists, function words take up a certain part of each word list which point to a language fact that function words is limited in number and inflectional forms while they are in large demand in actual use; and there are similar and common words among the high-frequency words, and the reason is that the content of three sub-corpora is mainly about university introduction; meanwhile, there are also differences in their usages of person in that the British sub-corpus tend to use first person we much frequently than third person it while the situation is opposite in the other two sub-corpora; and other differences lie in that the word community is used in higher frequency in the British sub-corpus and the frequent use of the word key in the Chinese sub-corpus;3) on the extremes of the keyword lists of the two observed corpora, the word teacher shows up on the positive extremes of both keyword lists and words like staff, environmental, sustainability, carbon appear on the negative extremes of both keyword lists. And the analysis indicates that there are obvious differences in the use of these words in the three sub-corpora.When conducting analyses on these words, this thesis also gives some suggestions that translators should refer to the original English texts for idiomatic expressions, improve lexical density of a text by enhancing the diversity of vocabulary, collocates, and subjects, and use first person we which is much better than third person it considering its communicative function in this kind of texts.Based on the results of the above analyses, the following part of this thesis goes further to discuss the reasons which lead to these differences. The reasons fall into three aspects:1) in different countries, universities interact or link with their surrounding communities in different ways or degrees;2) the academic atmosphere is different in each country because of various social elements;3) universities of different countries have different definition towards their social responsibility boundary.