A Comparative Study On The Use Of GRADUATION Resources In Research Articles Between Physical Sciences And Social Sciences

APPRAISAL system is a relatively new development of interpersonal meanings in the systemic functional linguistics, of which GRADUATION sub-system is a grading mechanism within APPRAISAL system. It is the semantic resource by which the volume in terms of intensity, amount, extent, etc. is turned up or down and hence the degree of ATTITUDE and ENGAGEMENT is construed. GRADUATION system has been applied to the analysis of different discourse. Yet, the studies on the GRADUATION resources in the academic discourse are far from enough.Through observation and analysis on the authentic data, this study attempts to probe into the use and operations of GRADUATION resources in the research articles in physical sciences and social sciences with a focus on their frequency, distribution, linguistic resources and operations. Based on these, the parallels and differences in the use of GRADUATION resources in the research articles between physical sciences and social sciences were explored. 72 research articles were selected from 12 authoritative international academic journals published from 2011 to 2013(36 research articles with a total of 286,459 words in physical sciences; 36 research articles with a total of 284,737 words in social sciences). The quantitative and qualitative approaches were deployed in the data processing and the quantitative approach was assisted by the Microsoft Office Excel and statistical package SPSS.Based on the data observation and analysis, we found there were both parallels and differences in the use of GRADUATION in terms of the frequency, distribution, linguistic resources and their operations in the research articles between physical sciences and social sciences. Specifically, there were more differences in the frequency of GRADUATION resources, but more parallels in the distribution of GRADUATION resources and the linguistic resources and operations for GRADUATION in the research articles between physical sciences and social sciences.Regarding the frequency of GRADUATION resources, the choice of each GRADUATION resource in the two corpora had its own features in the research articles in physical sciences and social sciences. Specifically, in the research articles of physical sciences GRADUATION resources were largely construed in terms of FORCE and FOCUS, of which FORCE was largely construed in terms of INTENSIFICATIONs of MODALITY, PROCESS and QUALITY, followed by QUANTIFICATIONs of NUMBER and MASS, and least in terms of QUANTIFICATIONs of EXTENT and INTENSIFICATIONs of AMOUNT. FOCUS was mainly construed in terms of SOFTEN. In the research articles of social sciences, GRADUATION resources were also mainly conveyed in terms of FORCE and FOCUS, of which FORCE was largely construed in terms of INTENSIFICATIONs of MODALITY and PROCESS and QUANTIFICATIONs of NUMBER, followed by INTENSIFICATIONs of QUALITY and QUANTIFICATIONs of MASS, and still least in terms of QUANTIFICATIONs of EXTENT and INTENSIFICATIONs of AMOUNT. FOCUS was realized mainly in terms of SHARPEN. Comparatively speaking, SOFTEN, QUANTIFICATIONs of EXTENT, INTENSIFICATIONs of MODALITY and AMOUNT were used more frequently in the research articles of physical sciences. QUANTIFICATIONs of NUMBER and INTENSIFICATIONs of PROCESS were used more frequently in the research articles of social sciences.As to the distribution, GRADUATION resources were used most in Conclusion, followed by Results and Discussion as well as Introduction, and least in Method in the research articles in both physical sciences and social sciences. But each GRADUATION resource had its own distributional features in the two corpora. Specifically, in the research articles of physical sciences, SHARPEN was used most in Conclusion and least in Results and Discussion. In the case of SOFTEN, it was just on the opposite. The QUANTIFICATIONs of NUMBER were used most in Introduction and least in Method. The QUANTIFICATIONs of MASS and EXTENT and the INTENSIFICATIONs of QUALITY, PROCESS and MODALITY were used most in Conclusion and also least in Method. The INTENSIFICATIONs of AMOUNT were used most in Results and Discussion and also least in Method. In the research articles of social sciences, SHARPEN was used most in Method and least in Results and Discussion. SOFTEN and the QUANTIFICATIONs of NUMBER were all used most in Introduction. But the former was used least in Conclusion and the latter in Method. The QUANTIFICATIONs of MASS were used most in Results and Discussion and least in Introduction. The QUANTIFICATIONs of EXTENT were used most in Conclusion and least in Results and Discussion. The INTENSIFICATIONs of QUALITY, PROCESS and MODALITY were all used most in Conclusion and least in Method. The INTENSIFICATIONs of AMOUNT were used most in Results and Discussion and also least in Method. Comparatively, there were no differences in the distributions of QUANTIFICATIONs of NUMBER and the INTENSIFICATIONs of QUALITY, PROCESS, MODALITY and AMOUNT between the two corpora.In terms of the linguistic resources used for GRADUATION and their operations, there were no differences in the research articles between physical sciences and social sciences. Specifically, in the two corpora, the grading of ATTITUDE was largely realized via the isolated modifiers and the semantic infusion by using adverbs, adjectives, quantifiers, modal words and some verbs, of which the QUANTIFICATIONs on ATTITUDE were construed mainly via the isolated modifiers by using quantifiers, adjectives that denote the ―number‖, ―size‖, ―weight‖, ―strength‖ and ―extent‖ of entities and the adverbs that denote ―extent‖ in both corpora. The INTENSIFICATIONs on ATTITUDE in both corpora were realized largely via the isolated modifiers and the semantic infusion by using such adjectives or their comparatives and superlatives that express QUALITY, the degree adverbs, manner adverbs and restrictive adverbs that are used to modify QUALITY, PROCESS and AMOUNT, and also by using modal words and certain verbs. The ―sharpening‖ and ―softening‖ on attitudinal meanings were largely construed via the isolated modifiers by using certain adjectives and adverbs.This study helps to further confirm the universality and feasibility of GRADUATION system. Meanwhile it can provide some in-depth insights into the GRADUATION system in terms of the frequency, distribution, linguistic resources and their operations. Besides, the present study can present us some reference to the writing and teaching of academic articles and hence to promote the realization of the communicative functions in the academic articles.