A Comparative Study Of Reporting Verbs In Chinese And American Doctoral Dissertations

As an important signal of the citation,reporting verbs serve as a significant rhetoric device that provides the citing writers with the chances of showing the feature of the cited material and expressing their own attitude towards the cited information.In recent years,a large body of research on reporting verbs has been done both theoretically and empirically.However,studies focusing on differences and similarities in using reporting verbs between Chinese English learners,especially advanced learners and native English-speakers are far from enough.Therefore,this thesis is aimed at the exploration of reporting verbs in the literature review section of Chinese and American doctoral dissertations in applied linguistics.This study builds two corpora:one is made up of 30 literature review sections written by Chinese doctoral students and the other is 30 literature review sections written by American doctoral students.Reporting verbs in the two corpora are collected,classified and analyzed with UAM(3.0)corpus tool and SPSS(21.0)under the guidance of Hyland's(2002)framework of reporting verbs and Coffin's(2009)engagement system.This study seeks to find out:(1)In terms of denotation,what are the similarities and differences in the distribution and features of each type of'reporting verbs in the literature review section of their English Ph.D.dissertations between Chinese and American doctoral students?(2)How are the evaluative functions of-reporting verbs realized in the literature review section of English Ph.D.dissertations and what are the factors contributing to the realization of their evaluative functions?(3)How is the dynamic interpersonal interaction meaning realized by reporting verbs in the literature review section of English Ph.D.dissertations?It has been found after this comparative study:(1)There is no statistical significance in using reporting verbs in terms of denotation between two groups of students.The types of reporting verbs used by Chinese doctoral students are as rich as their counterparts in America.However,significant differences are found in employing different categories of reporting verbs.Chinese doctoral students prefer to use more reporting verbs of research acts and cognition acts and fewer verbs of discourse acts than their counterparts;(2)In terms of evaluative potential,Chinese doctoral students prefer to express neutral stance towards the cited viewpoints,while their counterparts tend to use either positive or negative reporting verbs to express their acknowledgment or objection of the cited material;(3)Both Chinese and American doctoral students employ more reporting verbs belonging to dialogic expansion than those of dialogic contraction.Chinese doctoral students prefer to use the means of dialogic expansion to realize the dynamic interpersonal interaction meanings,while their counterparts tend to use morereporting verbs that narrow down dialogic space,thus making it unfavorable for the interpersonal interaction.This study provides some important pedagogical implications for second language teaching and writing.It is suggested that the improvement of students' ability of second language writing should depend on not only the variety of words but also the awareness of stance that words express.Admittedly,there are some limitations of this study.For example,dissertations of English-speakers are only confined to those written by American students and dissertations chosen are only confined to applied linguistics.Thus,in future studies,more data should be selected from other English-speaking countries and other research fields to further support the influence of cultural and disciplinary differences on the use of reporting verbs.