A Comparative Study Of Engagement Resources In English Academic Articles Of American And Chinese Masters

As an important sub-system of Appraisal Theory,"engagement" is used to investigate interpersonal meanings of discourses from dialogic perspective.Interpersonal meaning is an important function of academic discourses and a few studies have interpreted academic discourses from the aspect of interpersonal meaning.However,these studies did not show deep analysis and most of them focused on one part of academic discourses.Comparative studies on the resources used by English learners and English native speakers to realize interpersonal meanings were even rare.Based on Engagement,the current study proceeds a comparative analysis of the distribution features,lexical-grammatical realizations as well as interpersonal meanings of engagement resources in English academic articles of American and Chinese masters.The specific research questions are as follows:(1)What are the distribution features of engagement resources in the English academic articles of American and Chinese masters?What are the similarities and differences?(2)What lexical-grammatical devices do American and Chinese masters employ in Engagement?What are the similarities and differences?(3)How do they employ these engagement resources to realize interpersonal meanings?Twenty English academic articles,which include ten written by American masters and ten written by Chinese masters,are selected from PQDT and CNKI as the self-built two corpora for the present study.The engagement resources of the two corpora are annotated with reference to their contexts.Facilitated by AntConc Corpus Analysis Tool,both quantitative and qualitative methods are adopted to compare the distribution features,lexical-grammatical realizations and interpersonal meanings of engagement resources in the two corpora.The major findings are presented as follows:The major findings are presented as follows:Firstly,in terms of the distribution features of engagement resources,heterogloss plays a major role in the academic articles,with 94.4%and 86.2%in the two corpora respectively.Besides,monogloss is also a kind of indispensable engagement resource.American masters are inclined to present bare assertions followed by further illustrations whereas Chinese masters are inclined to present bare assertions without any explanations.In heterogloss,American masters employ more expansion than contraction but that is inverse for Chinese masters.In expansion,statistics reveal that attribution accounts for a higher proportion than entertainment,with 41.2%and 25.3%in the two corpora respectively.In terms of contraction,disclaiming largely outweighs proclaiming,respectively by 13.7%and 21%in the two corpora.More specifically,in disclaiming,American masters tend to adopt more countering,while Chinese masters tend to use more denial.As for proclaiming,both American and Chinese masters prefer to select endorsement.Secondly,when it comes to the lexical-grammatical realizations of these engagement resources,one of the notable feature is that American masters are good at employing various reporting verbs.Moreover,the typical syntactic patterns of two main engagement resources(attribution and countering)in the target discourses are summarized as follows:(1)Named researcher(s)+ reporting verb(cognitive,discourse,or research verb)+ that-clause(object clause);(2)It be + passive + that-clause;(3)Adverbial adjunct(According to)+ named researcher(s)/theory + main clause;(4)Although/Though/Even though + concessive clause +main clause;(5)Clause A + however/but/yet + clause B?Finally,with regard to the interpersonal meanings,American and Chinese masters employ these engagement resources especially heterogloss to realize a variety of interpersonal meanings.Monogloss mainly serves for stating hypothesis and research background or explaining the definition of certain term.Under heterogloss,the dialogic space between the writers and the readers can be expanded and narrowed.On one hand,expansion(attribution and entertainment)opens up the dialogic space for alternative views,making the discourses more dialogic,comprehensive and objective.On the other hand,contraction(disclaiming and proclaiming)reduces the dialogic space of other alternatives and allows the writers to align the readers into accepting positions expressed by the discourses.In this way,the credibility of their academic articles is enhanced.The current study not only enlarges the application of Appraisal Theory in discourse analysis,but also offers pedagogical implications for academic writing,that is,to cultivate students' awareness and ability of using engagement resources and to help them to establish appropriate interpersonal relations with readers in their academic discourses.