A Study Of Criticism Features In Chinese English-major Master’s Theses And Doctoral Dissertations

Academic criticism is one of the defining features of academic research and academic writings.In this study,it refers to the statement that provides the author’s negative evaluation on some academic characteristics of the existing research.Although there have been many studies exploring academic criticism,most of them only focus on the dimension of strategies of criticism.Besides,studies on criticism features in academic English writings of Chinese English-major postgraduate students are still limited.Given this,the study explores the general,respective criticism features of Chinese English-major master’s theses and doctoral dissertations,and the differences of criticism features between master’s theses and doctoral dissertations.The analytical framework proposed by Chen(2017)was modified to incorporate four dimensions of criticism including targets of criticism,contents of criticism,intensities of criticism,and strategies of criticism into one framework.Thirty master’s theses and thirty doctoral dissertations were randomly collected from CNKI.Corpus-supported quantitative research method was adopted,supplemented by qualitative analysis of the criticism features.The results show that:First,general academic criticism features in targets of criticism reveal that the criticism of others’ research predominates,which suggests that postgraduate students are able to associate their own research with others’ research and establish research gaps by criticizing others’ research.In contents of criticism,all categories of contents are covered and criticized comprehensively despite of different proportions.In intensities of criticism,postgraduate students tend to make moderate criticism and weak criticism,revealing their objective and cautious attitudes in conducting criticism.In strategies of criticism,the postgraduate students use more face-shielding strategy than face-threatening strategy,and they use the four face-shielding strategies comprehensively.This shows the postgraduate students’ intention and ability of maintaining rapport with the academic discourse community.Second,the academic criticism features of the master’s theses resemble the general criticism features in targets of criticism and intensities of criticism.In contents of criticism,the theories/models and results/findings are much less criticized than the research scope/focus and research methods in master’s theses,indicating master students’ weakness in theoretical criticism and insufficient courage to question the results/findings of the research.Besides,in strategies of criticism,master students employ more face-shielding strategy than face-threatening strategy,which is similar to the general criticism features.In terms of the four face-shielding strategies,master students mainly employ the basic hedging strategy;but praise-criticism pair strategy,other attribution strategy and comparison strategy are much less frequently employed.This finding indicates that master students’ strategies of criticism are to be fully developed.As for the academic criticism features of doctoral dissertations,the features resemble the general criticism features in targets of criticism.In contents of criticism,slightly different from the general features,the proportion of the criticism of definitions/concepts in doctoral dissertations is larger than the general corpus.The purpose is to clarify and present the key terms in doctoral students’ own research.In intensities of criticism,doctoral students make slightly more strong criticism than weak criticism,which shows their courage in conducting strong criticism.In strategies of criticism,the frequency of face-threatening strategy is close to face-shielding strategy.The balance between indirect criticism and direct criticism indicates doctoral students’ confidence in conducting academic criticism.In terms of the four face-shielding strategies,except for the comparison strategy,doctoral students use praise-criticism pair strategy,hedging strategy and other attribution strategy frequently.This reflects doctoral students’ ability in strategically managing interpersonal language in academic discourse.Third,the exploration of differences of criticism features between master’s theses and doctoral dissertations reveals that in targets of criticism,doctoral students are more inclined to criticize others’ research than master students,which suggests that doctoral students perform better in associating their own research with others’research and establishing research gaps by criticizing others’ research.In contents of criticism,doctoral students are more inclined to criticize theories/models than master students,while master students are more inclined to criticize research scope/focus than doctoral students.This reveals that doctoral students have developed better theory analyzing ability than master students,while master students tend to seek for scarcity of research regarding certain research topics.In intensities of criticism,the tone is stronger in doctoral dissertations than in master’s theses,which shows doctoral students are more daring to conduct strong criticism than master students.In strategies of criticism,doctoral students are more inclined to use face-threatening strategy than master students,and it is the opposite for face-shielding strategy.This shows doctoral students are more direct and confident in academic criticism than master students.In terms of the four face-shielding strategies,master students are more inclined to use basic strategies:hedging strategy and comparison strategy,which indicates their strategies of criticism awaits to be improved to a higher level,while doctoral students are more inclined to use praise-criticism pair strategy and other attribution strategy,which reflects their better evaluation competence and citation competence.This study incorporated four face-shielding strategies of criticism into the framework,supplementing the analytical framework proposed by Chen(2017).Besides,this study may arouse English-major postgraduate students’ awareness of the importance of academic criticism and provide implications for the instruction of academic criticism in academic English writing courses.