A Study Of Reporting In Citations In Academic Writing

This paper attempts to make a comparative study of reporting in citations between journal articles written by international scholars and MA theses written by Chinese students, thus providing a reporting model of citation discourse for Chinese students. This research was based on Martin’s (2003) Appraisal theory, Swales’(1990) Genre Analysis, and Hyland’s (1999) classification of reporting verbs. It aims to explore the reporting features in citation discourse expressed by the two author groups. By using the international scholars’ corpus as a reference standard, we can get some enlightenment on the use of reporting in citation discourse for Chinese language learners in English academe writing.The study is based on two self-built corpora. Both computer software and manual work are applied to collect and analyze the data. It aims to find out the similarities and differences between professional scholars and Chinese students in the use of reporting in academic writing, thus detecting the problems existing in Chinese students’ academic writing. The overall frequencies of citation, citation patterns, and frequencies of reporting verbs, semantic categories of reporting verbs and tenses and voices of reporting verbs are all our comparing subjects.The corpus of this research is composed of thirty assays from 2006 to 2013:fifteen journal articles by professional scholars published in international leading journals (about 103,305 words in total), and fifteen MA theses written by English learners in a Chinese key university (about 356,260 words in total). All the assays were written in the "IMRD" structure and their topics are all about writing. As for the coding of citation, we adopt Mansouriadeh & Ahmad’s (2011) method to select the data that we will study.The results of this comparative study reveal that the frequency of citation by Chinese students does not reach the standard if they want their papers published in international leading journals. After a detailed analysis, it is found that in terms of citation patterns, non-integral citation is preferred in ISC to emphasize the reported information or findings as well as the objectivity of reporting; while the writers of CSC are inclined to use integral citation to leave the view to the quoted author. As for the reporting verbs, it is found that the often-used reporting verbs in CSC cover research verbs, cognitive verbs and textual verbs. The coverage of different reporting verbs means that Chinese students have learned to use various types of reporting verbs to reduce the dullness of their theses and also to express their attitudes. However, there is still misuse example like the misuse of negative verb "claim" to express positive meaning. This situation indicates that Chinese students should strengthen their semantic understanding of different reporting verbs. With regard to the tenses, the simple present tense and simple past tense occupied almost all the tenses in CSC, while the writers of ISC also use a number of present- perfect tense and other tenses. In terms of the voice of reporting verbs, passive voice is used more frequently in CSC than that in ISC. However, in citation discourse, the writers of ISC are actually inclined to use active voice to make their expression more directly, objectively and powerful.This thesis is an attempt to provide a more authority standard for the use of reporting in citation discourse in English academic writing; it not only serves to help Chinese language learners to understand and use reporting in citation discourse better, but also provides some useful suggestions for the teaching of English academic writing in China.