A Contrastive Analysis Of Rhetorical Structures In English Research Article Abstracts By Chinese And Native English Scholars

The importance of an abstract,the epitome of the research article,has been gradually recognized by scholars which describes the scientific research in the research article objectively and accurately.Abstract serves as a time-saving device for readers quickly mastering the general ideas of the research article and helps scholars learn the latest developments in their fields.Furthermore,by means of abstracts,scholars exchange their ideas and demonstrate the academic findings in the academic community.In recent years,the research of abstracts in academic discourses has been attracting increasing attention in linguistic research.Rhetorical Structure Theory is a theory of describing discourse structure.It is based on the rhetorical relations within discourses,describing the coherence in discourses.In academic writing,the usage of rhetorical relations in abstracts manifests the main structure of the abstracts.The appropriate employment of rhetorical relations in research article abstracts guides readers comprehend the discourse structure better.Recently,the researches of rhetorical relations in research article abstracts based on Rhetorical Structure Theory have yet to be fully explored.Based on rhetorical relations in Rhetorical Structure Theory,this study selects 80 English abstracts in linguistics from international core journals: 40 from research article abstracts written by Chinese scholars and 40 from research article abstracts written by native English scholars,aiming to answer the following two questions:(1)What are the similarities or differences in the types of rhetorical relations in research article abstracts by Chinese scholars and native English scholars?(2)What are the similarities or differences in the distributions of rhetorical relations in research article abstracts by Chinese scholars and native English scholars?This study employs Rhetorical Structure Theory tool as the annotation software of rhetorical relations to make an annotation for the rhetorical relations appeared in the 80 English abstracts.After analyzing the 80 English abstracts,the types and frequencies of rhetorical relations in abstracts will be presented in Rhetorical Structure Theory tool.Whether there are significant differences in the distributions of rhetorical relations in abstracts by Chinese scholars and native English scholars are obtained through Chi-square tests of independence.If there are significant differences in the distributions of some rhetorical relations,the comparative analysis of the observed frequencies and expected frequencies of these rhetorical relations are conducted to reveal the specific distribution characteristics of them in research article abstracts.The results show that(1)the types of rhetorical relations in research article abstracts by the two groups are identical.However,there are similarities and differences in the specific usage of relation types.The similarities are that four most frequent rhetorical relations in the abstracts by the two groups are elaboration relation,joint relation,non-volitional result relation and background relation(higher than 5%);three least frequent rhetorical relations in the abstracts by the two groups are non-volitional cause relation,restatement relation and list relation(lower than 2%).The differences are that the percentages of summary relation and evaluation relation in abstracts by Chinese scholars are both higher than 5%,whereas native English scholars adopt the two relations lower than 5%;the percentage of means relation in abstracts by native English scholars accounts for more than 5%,whereas,the percentage of means relation in abstracts by Chinese scholars is less than 5%;(2)the general distributions of rhetorical relations in English abstracts by the two groups has no significant difference.Specifically,there are no significant differences in the distributions of subject matter relations,multinuclear relations and the four most frequent relations.However,there are significant differences in the distributions of presentational relations and the relation of summary,evaluation and means.Chinese scholars are prone to choose the antithesis relation,summary relation and evaluation relation rather than native English scholars;Compared to Chinese scholars,native English scholars prefer to select background relation,concession relation and means relation.The investigation not only expands the research scope of abstracts,but also offers a new perspective into the researches of research article abstracts.Furthermore,the findings of this study are beneficial to teaching and writing in second language.