A Case Study Of Citation Behaviors In Master's Theses Of Literary Studies

While citation is an essential feature of academic writing,how to use citations appropriately often poses a tremendous challenge to second language(L2)learners.The existent literature has produced a number of analytical frameworks,attempting to describe citation behaviors of students of various proficiency levels in a range of disciplines of both natural sciences and social sciences.However,these frameworks have not covered students' citation behaviors in academic writing in the field of literary studies.Given that the research paradigm in the literary studies may have different requirements of citations from those in many other disciplines,and that master's theses are a common genre of academic writing among novice L2 writers,further analysis of citation behaviors in master's thesis of literary studies should be useful to complement the existent analytical frameworks.A recent and relatively comprehensive analytical framework of students' citation behaviors is from Fazel and Shi's(2015).The study explored citation behaviors in doctoral students' research grant proposal writing.The data came from semi-structured text-based interviews,where interviewees answered questions with the presence of their own proposal written texts.The study analyzed citation behaviors from two aspects,i.e.,the rhetorical functions of citations,which means writers use citations for textual coherence;and citing strategies,which means writers use citations to engage the readers.Applying the research design of Fazel and Shi's(2015),the present study analyzes the citation behaviors of two master's students of literary studies.The major findings are as follows:First,seven rhetorical functions appear in the two students' citing behaviors,i.e.,to define a concept;to support;to establish a territory;to contrast different viewpoints;to connect different parts;to summarize;to express disagreement.Among the citation functions,five categories differ from what was identified in Fazel and Shi's(2015)study,i.e.,to define a concept,to contrast different viewpoints,to connect different parts,to summarize and to express disagreement.These new categories can be related to the genre and disciplinary differences.Compared with grant proposal writing,the graduate thesis is greater in length and needs multiple links between citations.In addition,important notions and viewpoints for analyzing literary texts should be cited many times in different sections in the field of literary studies.Second,the students tend to use five citing strategies,i.e.,cite the authority,to present extensive knowledge,to follow professors' suggestions,to mask unfamiliarity,to show interests.Unlike the findings from Fazel and Shi(2015),the present study has three new strategies,i.e.,to cite the authority,to present extensive knowledge,to show interests.Such differences in strategy use may come from disciplinary differences.This study shows that learners in the field of literary studies regard the authors of the literary works as the authority,partly explaining why the strategy to cite the authority is used extensively in the present study.The use of these citing strategies is also influenced by personal citation preferences.As a participant in the study indicated,she presented extensive knowledge and showed her interests because of her personal preferences.The study has some significance for enriching the analytical frameworks of citation behaviors as well as for improving pedagogical practices.In terms of the framework,this study complemented the existent framework with further identified categories of rhetorical functions of citations and citing strategies.Pedagogically,this study suggests that it is helpful for writing instructors and thesis supervisors to raise students' awareness of rhetorical functions of citations as well as appropriate citing strategies in their academic writing.