| Under the influence of social constructionism,research articles are not only objective representations of academic views,but are constructed to apply metadiscourse to convey stance and achieve interpersonal interaction to gain readers’ academic recognition.Therefore,metadiscourse research has caused widespread concern in academic circles.However,previous metadiscourse studies rely heavily on predetermined search items,which has led to most metadiscourse items being presented as isolated words.According to corpus linguistics,language has a phraseological tendency rather than individual words.As high-frequency phraseological sequences,lexical bundles are important carriers of metadiscourse in academic discourse,especially non-propositional bundles with obvious metadiscourse functions.Therefore,from a bundle-driven perspective,metadiscourse research can make up for the neglect of longer linguistic resources in the frequently cited metadiscourse items.Based on Hyland’s interpersonal model of metadiscourse and Li Liang et al.’s model of metadiscourse bundles,the present study is to explore the use of metadiscourse bundles in English research articles by Chinese and native scholars.The study intends to answer the following questions:(1)What are the similarities and differences in distributions of metadiscourse bundles in English research articles by Chinese and native scholars?(2)What are the similarities and differences in structures of metadiscourse bundles in English research articles by Chinese and native scholars?(3)What are the similarities and differences in functions of metadiscourse bundles in English research articles by Chinese and native scholars?(4)Why are there differences concerning the use of metadiscourse bundles between Chinese and native scholars?With 60 research articles published in 2015-2021 from Applied Linguistics and Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics respectively,two corpora are compiled in the present study,namely,corpus of research articles by native writers(CANW)and corpus of research articles by Chinese writers(CACW).Using quantitative and qualitative research methods,this study investigates the similarities and differences of metadiscourse bundles in English research articles by Chinese and native scholars and the reasons for the differences between them.The study yields the following findings:(1)Both groups of scholars tend to use more interactive bundles.Chinese scholars use significantly more interactive bundles and fewer interactional bundles than their native English counterparts.In the interactive dimension,Chinese scholars comparatively overuse endophoric and code gloss bundles.In the interactional dimension,Chinese scholars comparatively overuse booster bundles,but the remaining subcategories are all underused.(2)The structural distribution of metadiscourse bundles in CACW is broadly consistent with CANW.Prepositional and noun bundles are more common than others,and prepositional bundles are used significantly more than noun ones.In contrast,Chinese scholars overuse passive + prep phrase fragments but underuse prepositional structures and anticipatory it + verb or adjectival phrases.(3)Metadiscourse bundles are important rhetorical resources for constructing academic interaction and argumentation.Chinese scholars rely heavily on interactive bundles to lend coherence and readability to their academic writing.At the same time,they have some deficiencies in using interactional bundles,especially in expressing hedging and boosting.(4)The differences in the use of metadiscourse bundles between the two corpora are mainly due to the transfer of mother tongue,their rhetorical preferences,and the imitation of native-like rhetorical norms.This study not only extends the research scope of metadiscourse bundles,but reveals the existing problems of using metadiscourse bundles in English research articles by Chinese scholars.Besides,it provides teachers with significant implications for writing pedagogy by accessing lexical bundles as metadiscourse resources. |
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