Literature Reviews In M.A. Theses By Chinese And American Writers: A Genre Analysis

As the research field of genre analysis progresses, longer texts such as masters’ theses and doctoral dissertations begin to raise researchers’ attention. The previous studies have examined different parts, such as abstract, introduction, result, discussion. However, there seems to be little concern on literature review of theses or dissertations. Moreover, the available studies mainly focus on native English speakers’ theses or dissertations’ LR, leaving non-native English speakers’ LR untouched.The present thesis aims to investigate the literature review sections in M.A. theses written by Chinese writers and their native English-speaking counterparts from a perspective of genre analysis. The two corpora, each consisting of literature reviews accompanying 20 masters’ theses written by Chinese and native English-speaking writers, were exploited. The results of the research are expected to show how the two groups of texts differ in terms of macro generic structure.The results show that both similarities and differences exist in LR between the two groups of texts. The greatest similarity lies in that the two corpora are found to have similar overall structures and basic elements, which can be attributed to the communicative purposes of LR as an academic genre. Differences primarily exist in that American writers usually figure out problems and weaknesses in previous studies. Chinese writers tend to state the relevancy and applicability of the surveyed terminologies and theories to their own research.The present study is expected to contribute to the existing work on LR of research theses in the perspective of genre theory and to find out the cross-cultural differences between texts composed by writers from different backgrounds; meanwhile, to help Chinese writers with their awareness of LR as an academic genre.