A Study Of Authorial Self-mention Resources In English Abstract Of Chinese Efl Learners' MA Theses

Nowadays,many studies indicate that academic writing is not just about presenting ideational “content”,it is also about the representation of writer self.The extent to which writers can intrude into the academic writing is a controversial issue and the use of authorial self-mention resources can be problematic for English native speakers and much more so for non-native speakers.For Chinese EFL learners,the creating of MA thesis is one of the research tasks that need to be finished by students with an aim to obtain professional degree.The part of English abstract,as a kind of epitome of the whole text,plays a significant role in helping readers to grasp the main idea.Previous studies on authorial self-mention resources(ASRs)focus on the exploration of first person pronoun category especially the analysis of “I”,while lacking enough attention on other categories or other ASRs.Therefore,the author tends to analyze ASRs used in English abstract of Chinese EFL learners' MA theses based on self-established corpora.At the same time,the corresponding authorial identities behind ASRs will also be discussed.This thesis is a corpus-based analysis and two self-established corpora are involved.The observed corpus consists of 80 English abstracts of MA theses written by Chinese EFL learners from 2000-2018.As for the reference corpus,it is composed of 200 English abstracts of MA theses written by English native speakers to ensure the referenceability and reliability.The following are the research questions of the study:(1)What are the frequency and preference of authorial self-mention resources in English abstract of Chinese EFL Learners' MA theses?(2)What are the characteristics of authorial identities constructed by the usage of authorial self-mention in the two corpora?(3)And what are the possible reasons for the preferences?The findings can be summarized into the following:In terms of ASRs across category,the usage of ASRs in abstract noun category rank first in both corpora.As for the rest two categories,Chinese EFL learners tend to use more ASRs in the third person pronoun category while English native speakers tend to use more ASRs in the first person pronoun category.Consistent with the result of previous studies,this thesis also finds that the first person pronoun “I” is underused significantly by Chinese EFL learners.And “we” is overused though the difference is not statistically significant.As for the preference of authorial identities,the authorial identity “recounter” ranks first in both corpora.This just proves our assumptions since data in the thesis is the abstract part in theses.The abstract of the thesis,as a kind of epitome of the whole text,is a part of academic writing with full independence,which is designed to help readers to grasp the main content as soon as possible.Besides,this study also indicates that authorial identities “originator” and “opinion-holder” are underused by Chinese EFL learners.Theoretically,this study adopts Tang and John's Identity Construction Theory to analyze the usage of ASRs and corresponding authorial identities constructed,and Brown and Levinson's Face Saving Theory is also adopted here to demonstrate some possible reasons.As for the practical value,the author hopes that the present study will contribute to future research on analysis of ASRs in academic writing,construction of authorial identities as well as the writing of English abstract in MA theses.