A Comparative Study On Stance Adverbs In Conclusions Of English Linguistics M.a.degree Theses Written By Chinese And Americans

In the process of communication,people inevitably express their attitudes,judgments and evaluations about a topic through stance markers.Nouns and adjectives are often used to express stance,while stance adverb is also a typical stance marker.In M.A.degree thesis,the conclusion section can best reveal researchers' stance on their studies.The ability to apply stance adverbs in an appropriate way is a key marker of successful academic writing.Previous researches on single stance adverbs are very limited,and few scholars have done analysis on stance expressions in thesis conclusions.This thesis will adopt a corpus-based comparative study method to explore the use of stance adverbs in English linguistics M.A.degree theses written by Chinese and Americans,and also to study the similarities and differences of Chinese and American masters' using of stance adverbs.The three research questions of this study are:(1)What is the distribution of different categories of stance adverbs in conclusions of linguistics M.A.degree theses written by Chinese and Americans?(2)What are the lexico-grammatical features of stance adverbs used by Chinese and Americans?(3)What are the functions of stance adverbs used by Chinese and Americans?This study is grounded on Appraisal Theory,and tries to reveal features of Chinese and Americans' using of stance adverbs to express attitudes,judgments and opinions.In this study,the author selects the conclusion sections of 80(40 written by Chinese,40 written by Americans)English linguistics M.A.degree theses from 2010 to 2018,and builds Chinese M.A.Theses Corpus(CMTC)and American M.A.Theses Corpus(AMTC).Ant Conc 3.4.3 and BFSU Collocator 1.0 are used to explore the frequency,the lexico-grammatical features and the functions of stance adverbs.The findings are as follows:(1)Generally,Chinese English linguistics masters use more stance adverbs than American native speakers do.On category level,the rankings of the proportions of hedging,evaluation,affect and evidentiality stance adverbs are similar.Among them,hedging stance adverb accounts for the largest proportion,while affect and evidentiality ones have the least proportion.The difference of the two corpora lies in that the ranking of style-of-speaking stance adverb in CMTC is higher than that in AMTC,while the ranking of certainty stance adverb in CMTC is lower than that in AMTC.(2)Chinese and Americans English linguistics masters all prefer to use stance adverbs in medial position.Most initial position stance adverbs are style-of-speaking and hedging stance adverbs,while most final position stance adverbs are evaluation ones.Contrast to Americans,Chinese use more style-of-speaking but less hedging stance adverbs in initial position.As for final position,Chinese use more evaluation but no evidentiality stance adverbs compared with their American counterparts.The collocational preference of the commonly used stance adverbs by Chinese and Americans are similar.Chinese and Americans all have a preference to collocate stance adverbs with nouns,adjectives and prepositions,but Chinese also tend to use adverbs and cardinal numbers to collocate with stance adverbs,which is different from Americans.(3)Chinese and Americans English linguistics masters all use stance adverbs to achieve objectivity,and directly reveal their attitude about a statement.Chinese use more style-of-speaking stance adverbs which indicate sequence to express their opinions in a more logical way,while Americans use more certainty stance adverbs to strengthen their voices in academic discourses.The finding of this study can provide some suggestions for the teaching and learning of English academic writings.Teachers should help students enhance their awareness of using adverbs to express stance and improve the quality of the academic writing;Students should learn from native speakers about their using of stance adverbs.