Contrastive Analysis Of L1 And L2 Reporting Verbs' Transitivity Processes

Reporting verbs are playing a significant role in academic research articles.Although the reporting verbs have been analyzed by linguistic scholars in numerous different aspects,little research has been applied in contrastive analysis of reporting verbs' transitivity processes between native and non-native MA English theses.This study aims to explore how native speaker of English(L1)and Chinese non-native speaker of English(L2)MA postgraduates justify the value of their research in the Literature Review parts of their master theses through the analysis of reporting verbs' transitivity processes from the perspective of genre structures in Literature Reviews and to find out the fixed language pattern of Literature Review through the usage of Reporting Verbs.The means for the present research is basically contrastive,by establishing a corpus-based reporting verbs transitivity analysis and genre analysis on a sample of 30 L1 English MA thesis Literature Reviews from ProQuest MA database,and 30 L2 English MA thesis Literature Reviews from CNKI MA database.The 60 MA theses are randomly extracted from the discipline of applied linguistics.The results show that there are some similarities in the perspective of transitivity processes of reporting verbs as well as move structures across the two corpora.The L1 and L2 English MA theses Literature Reviews have three moves.Move 1(Establishing one part of the territory of one's own research),Move 2(Creating a research niche),and Move 3(Occupying the research niche).The main transitivity processes of reporting verbs are Mental Processes,Verbal Processes and Material Processes both in L1 and L2 English MA theses.The stable language patterns in Literature Reviews are Move 1-Mental Process(Relational Process: attributive)and M2-Mental Process(Relational Process: attributive).Meanwhile,there are some differences in the perspective of transitivity processes of reporting verbs as well as move structures across the two corpora.Firstly,in the perspective of transitivity of reporting verbs under move structures,the citation consciousness of L2 MA postgraduates is higher than L1 ones.The same goes to the Mental Processes of reporting verbs as the Mental Processes in L2 English MA thesis are also higher than L1 English MA thesis.Besides,the transitivity patterns of reporting verbs in L1 English MA thesis are more complex and diverse than L2 English MA thesis.What's more,the L1 MA postgraduates are more likely to report the changes,development and results of the original writer's research.Secondly,in the perspective of genre structures,the L1 MA postgraduates use more complicated moves than L2 MA postgraduates.Especially,in the conclusion part of Literature Review,the L1 MA postgraduates are more likely to use language pattern Strategy C in Move 1-Mental Process.However,the L2 MA postgraduates are accustomed to using language pattern Strategy 2E in Move 2.The findings indicate that L1 English MA thesis Literature Review is different from L2 ones in the perspective of transitivity processes of reporting verbs and move structures.Especially,compared with L1 English MA thesis Literature Review,L2 English MA thesis Literature Review prefers to use Mental Processes of Reporting Verbs.The result might attribute to the conventional thoughts of L2 MA postgraduates who are more likely to use a euphemistic way to express and evaluate their opinions and thoughts,thus the Mental Processes can help L2 MA postgraduates achieve this goal: to express views in a mild way without taking responsibility.Therefore,different writing culture plays a great important role in its preference for certain languages and genre structures in Literature Reviews.Through the analysis of reporting verbs' transitivity processes of genre structures in Literature Reviews,it can help the academic writers not only know the linguistic features of Literature Review,but also have a better understanding of the relationship between the language features within the rhetorical structures.This research can help find out the stable language patterns of Literature Review.Besides,language teaching,especially academic writings,can benefit a lot from it.