A Contrastive Study On Evidentiality In Chinese And English Academic Discourses

Evidentiality is speaker or writer’s expressions of source of information and commitment to the reliability of information. Recently, it has aroused interests of many linguists and they have made considerable achievements in the field. However, the contrastive evidential analysis is relatively few, especially between English and Chinese. In addition, concerning the academic discourse, this contrastive study is rare and imperative.The thesis aims to make contrastive evidential study on AD across languages and fields. It adopts stratified random sampling, to selects80articles from core journals both home and abroad in four fields, namely, soft-pure field, soft-applied field, hard-applied field, and hard-pure field. Within the established theoretical framework, Huzhuanglin’s modified model of evidentiality, Swale’s Discourse Community and Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory, the paper gives detailed description of the similarities and differences in the use of evidentiality across languages and fields with the help of Log-Likelihood Calculator; explores the possible reasons behind such differences and academic features reflected by use of evidentials.The yielded research findings of the present study are as follows:In terms of overall frequency of evidentiality in AD, it shows evidentials do exist in a considerable amount in AD. Besides, it is proved that there are still differences among six categories of evidentiality, which take different proportions in the frequency of evidentiality in the academic writing. Generally speaking, hearsay, induction and deduction evidentials are predominant ones in evidentiality that indicates authors’respect for the objectiveness of AD and their awareness of the social and interactive nature of AD. It also indicates, to make and promote claim, they actively adapts expression way to meet their own communicative needs and needs of readers in the process of communication.Concerning frequency of evidentiality between languages, it has found that the amount of evidentials in English significantly exceeds that in Chinese. Except expectations and reliability evidentials, the frequencies of hearsay and induction evidentials in Chinese are significantly higher than that in English while deduction and belief are lower than that in English. It may be attributed to influences of different thought patterns and academic cultures in respective discourse communities. Considering thought patterns, eastern thought is rambling and spiral, while English thought pattern is logical and linear. This thought pattern of Chinese people is so heavily influenced by traditional Chinese culture and society that they show conservativeness and cautious in making claims. Foreign scholars are more active in making claims and promoting their attitude than their counterparts in Chinese. Regarding academic culture, foreign scholars in their discourse community, emphasizes individualism, interaction and negotiation, while Chinese scholars lay emphasis on collectivism, objectivity and authoritativeness. English scholars incline to initiate an author-reader interaction and are willing to present themselves in view of making claims.With regards to evidentiality in AD across fields, there are similarities and differences across fields. The thesis makes comparison between hard fields and soft fields and then between pure fields and applied fields. It has found that:regarding the frequency between hard fields and soft fields, the general frequency of evidentials in hard fields is higher than that of soft fields and they have significant difference. And the frequencies of respective evidentials are also different. The induction, deduction, expectations and belief evidentials in hard fields are lower than that in soft fields, except hearsay and reliability evidentials; with regards to pure fields and applied fields, their differences mainly lie in the fact that all the frequencies, both general frequency and respective frequency of each type in pure fields are higher than that of pure fields.The present study takes pragmatic approach to make a relatively more comprehensive analysis of evidentiality across languages and fields; and it provides guidance for academic writers and leads to effective academic exchange.