Thematic Analysis Of English Abstract In English Major M.A. Thesis From The Perspective Of Move Structure

With the deepening of academic exchanges between China and foreign countries,the importance of English abstracts of Chinese academic papers in academic exchanges has drawn more and more attention.English abstract is a window to readers which helps them quickly grasp the main content and framework of the article,as well a bridge between Chinese and foreign academic exchanges which can be used to measure whether the paper meets the standards of international academic papers.Therefore,the writing of abstract should be emphasized.In recent years,the research on the English abstracts of academic thesis mainly studied from the perspectives of genre analysis or Systematic Functional Linguistics analysis of abstracts so as to clearly reflect the general framework and structural layout of abstracts.However,there are fewer researches combining the two perspectives to analyze the abstracts of academic thesis.Move-step is the discourse unit of text,and different moves have different functions in the construction of discourse structure.In recent years,the comparative analysis of abstracts in different languages has arisen and attracted the attention of a large number of scholars.In terms of move structure or thematic feature,many scholars compare the characteristics and differences of the English abstracts of dissertations written by Chinese and foreign students and find out the shortcomings of Chinese postgraduate students in writing English abstracts,and further provide effective suggestions for Chinese postgraduate students to improve the writing abilities of English abstracts.However,few scholars pay attention to the comparative analysis of the thematic distribution in different moves by combining genre analysis with Systematic Functional Linguistics.The thesis tries to combine the move structure in genre analysis and the thematic theory under the discourse function in Systematic Functional Linguistics by making a thematic analysis of the English abstracts of the 120 English majors' thesis dissertations from the perspective of move structure.The abstracts are analyzed from two aspects: the macro-structure and thematic features in each move of MA thesis abstracts and the data were processed via the search engine software AntConc 3.2.Then,the author elaborates the thematic feature of each clause in each move.The results of the analysis show that the abstracts of academic dissertations show some interactive characteristics in terms of move steps and thematic distributions,which can better fulfill the abstract's function of summarizing the research contents of the dissertations,highlighting the research value and attracting readers' interest.Through the above research,this article hopes it will offer some suggestions for the writer of English abstracts on the theme choice in different move steps in order to better realize the function of each move step.