A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Citations In English And Chinese Journals

Citation is an important part in academic writings which helps the writer to develop his own viewpoints in reference to previous studies, to display his knowledge of previous studies and to increase the credibility and authority of his research. A lot of studies on citations have been done since 1960 s. However, most of them focused on the classification and motivation of citations, the grammatical study of verbs of reporting or the comparison of citations in English writers’ academic writings and Chinese EFL academic writings in English. Different from previous studies, this study aims to reveal writers’ evaluation, judgment and stances entailed in citations, to find out the differences of citations in English and Chinese journals, and to reveal nonstandard uses of citations in academic writings based on the self-built corpora of30 academic papers from English and Chinese journals under the guidance of Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA). According to Van Dijk(1998), CDA is a field that is concerned with studying and analyzing written and spoken texts to reveal the discursive sources of power, dominance, inequality and bias.This research adopts Fairclough’s three-dimensional model as the analytic tool for CDA, viewing discourse as the unity of text, discoursal practice and social practice. Based on the theory of CDA and Fairclough’s three-dimensional model, the author carries out a comparative Critical Discourse Analysis of citations in English and Chinese journals by both quantitative and qualitative methods. By the quantitative method, the general frequency and distribution of citation use are analyzed with tables and figures showing statistics and numbers. By the qualitative method, the choice of verbs of reporting and the choice of subjects are analyzed to unmask writers’ attitude and evaluation in citations from the text dimension. Citation structures, citation modes and fuzzy subjects in citations are explored with specific examples to demonstrate how writers affect readers’ focus and understanding of cited information from the discoursal practice dimension. The dynamic relationship among social convention, writers, cited author and readers is analyzed from the socialpractice dimension. Besides, this study also compares citations in English journals with citations in Chinese journals from the ideological perspective and finds out the possible reasons for the differences.The comparative Critical Discourse Analysis conducted in this research demonstrates that there is a certain degree of ideology and evaluation hidden in citations in both English journals and Chinese journals. For different ideological intentions, writers use different ways to cite and use different citation modes, citation structures, verbs of reporting and subjects in citations, which will have different influence on readers’ understanding and judgment of the cited viewpoints. Secondly,there is a dynamic relationship among social convention, writers, readers and cited authors in academic discourse and ideology works as the media in this dynamic relationship. Thirdly, differences between the citations in Chinese journals and English journals are found out. Chinese scholars are more conserved to convey their own judgment to the cited information and rely more on authority, while English scholars prefer to construct writer identity and integrate cited views with their own analysis. It is found by this research and other relevant comparative research that the differences in citations are due to different western and Chinese culture, writers’ different writing styles, different thinking patterns, different attitude towards academic writings and different norms of English and Chinese journals. Finally, some nonstandard citations are found in the research such as the garbling cited statements without context, misuse negative verbs of reporting for positive verbs of reporting,and the use of fuzzy subjects.This study can help readers to improve critical awareness and sensitivity, and to think critically about the cited viewpoints instead of accepting writers’ views blindly.It will also raise awareness of writers in using citations properly and paying attention to the interaction with cited authors and potential readers. This research also suggests writers keeping a balance of being faithful to the factual information and improving the ability to construct writer identity and interpret the cited viewpoints.