A Cross-cultural Comparative Analysis Of Critical Speech Acts In Chinese And German Academic Papers

In today’s competitive academic community,scientists face high pressures to present new knowledge and justify the publication of their research articles.A number of rhetorical-argumentative strategies are applied,which include academic criticism and critical speech acts.Because the assessment and perception of criticism and the handling of critical speech acts are highly culture-specific and conditioned by the discipline culture,the Chinese and German authors have their own specific rhetorical preferences,which sometimes lead to misunderstanding and put either the factual level or the relational level of communication at a disadvantage.This thesis is based on the various critical speech acts in the Chinese and German academic papers in the humanities and natural sciences and mainly discusses the following questions: How are the critical speech acts expressed in Chinese and German academic papers? Which intercultural differences in critical speech acts can be identified in Chinese and German academic writing? How is the concept of academic criticism constituted that is transculturally oriented and can transcend disciplinary discourses?Based on the model composed of the taxonomy of the rhetorical strategies in academic writing by Burgess and Fagan and the pattern of text and discourse development of the criticism of Reisigl,the critical speech acts are contrastively analyzed in relation to the critics,criticized instances,practical forms of expression and the use of hedging.A total of 80 Chinese and German academic papers are analyzed as a corpus,including 40 Chinese and 40 German texts,both relating to the humanities and natural sciences.Ground on the data analysis,it is found that the writer-mediation,personal criticized objects,narrative,explicit,and instructive textual patterns of criticism,and three types of hedging – accuracy-based hedges,writer-based hedges,and readermotivated hedges,are an important part of the critical speech acts in Chinese academic writing.On the other hand,the academic criticism in the German academic works is characterized by the few writer-mediation,impersonal criticized objects,descriptive discourse patterns and the frequent use of the accuracy-based hedges and author-based hedges.The above study shows the differences between the Chinese and German academic discourse communities: individuality,personal responsibility and the construction of identity play an essential role in Chinese academic writing,while the production of knowledge that is valid beyond the individual and the group constraints that are considered objective and authoritative lead to the avoidance of individualized criticism in the German academic discourse.For cooperative and knowledge-productive communication between the Chinese and German scientific communities,a balance between the individualized and formalized criticism must be found.This thesis aims to contribute to the following aspects.It combines the critical speech acts in academic writing with the inherent and specific understanding of the concept of criticism in different cultural areas and disciplinary cultures.Through the contrastive analysis,it goes into the methods and processes of knowledge production in the Chinese and German academic discourse community and tries to reconceptualize the academic criticism,which serves as a bridge between Chinese and German academic communication so that the Chinese and German academic community can transcend their own modes of criticism,discuss with one another in the will to reach an understanding and consensus and finally merge into a common academic culture.