| Evidentiality means the source of knowledge and the speaker’s attitude to the reliability of knowledge.It is an important language means to express the author’s propositions,provide support for arguments,guide the readers to interpret the text and help the author to establish an image of professional authority.The introduction section,as the beginning of academic papers,can arouse readers’ attention and decide whether to read further.The study on evidentiality in this section is of guiding significance for academic writing.Current studies are mainly about the academic papers as a whole but few scholars focus on the introduction section from the perspective of evidentiality.In order to bridge this research gap,based on Yang’s(2015)evidential analytical framework,this thesis selectes the introduction sections of English academic papers in SSCI and SCI top international journals of linguistics,journalism and communication,biology and chemistry,and classifies them into natural science corpus and social science corpus respectively.Quantitative analysis is conducted through chi-square test to address the following research questions: 1)what is the overall distribution of evidentials in the introduction sections of RAs in social sciences and natural sciences?2)what are the characteristics of the distribution of evidentials and its lexicogrammatical realizations in the introduction sections of RAs in social sciences and natural sciences?It is found that in the two corpora,both reporting and inferring evidentials occupy a large proportion,while belief evidentials and sensory evidentials constitute a small proportion,and there is a significant difference in the frequency between belief and sensory evidentials.For the use of sensory evidentials,the frequency of visual verbs of natural sciences is higher than that of social sciences.In terms of the lexicogrammatical realizations,the natural science scholars are more inclined to use objective forms like it is / as(can)be +v-ed...,while the social science scholars are more inclined to use subjective expressions,such as I / we + visual verbs,etc.On reporting evidentials,both prepositional phrase and noun clauses form occupy a small proportion in both corpora,except for parenthetical references and reporting verbs.As for the lexicogrammatical realizations of reporting verbs,scholars in natural sciences and social sciences are more inclined to choose x+verbs form.The commonly used prepositional phrases and noun clauses are mostly according to and the fact that,etc.There is a significant difference in the use of inferring evidentials between the two major disciplines,and writers of social sciences have an apparent higher frequency use of inferring evidentials than those of natural sciences.However,in the other five lexicogrammatical realizations,the two major disciplines tend to have the same distribution patterns.In terms of modal verbs,the frequency of the median-value and low-value modal verbs in two major disciplines is higher.The commonly used modal adverbs are usually and generally,etc.The frequently used lexicogrammatical realizations of it-clause,prepositional phrases and noun forms are it can be concluded,in general and possibility respectively.As to the use of belief evidentials,except for it-clauses,in general,there are significant differences between the two disciplines in psychological verbs and prepositional phrases.Moreover,scholars in social sciences and natural sciences tend to use more neutral psychological verbs,such as find and consider,etc.It can be argued and in our views,etc are commonly used realizations of it-clause and prepositional phrases respectively.By studying the characteristics of the use of the evidentials in the introduction of RAs in top international journals in natural sciences and social sciences,this study can offer practical references concerning effective use of evidentials for scholars and students,and it is expected that academic paper writers will use the evidentials reasonably according to discipline disparity and distribution characteristics of evidentials in the introduction section. |
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