第一章绪论
l.l研究背景
作为中国学者在学术领域中，英语是国际交流沟通的重要手段之一，在世界沟通和一体化这个过程中有着非常重要的地位。世界各地的研究人员通过研究展示了他们最新的研究结果，在国际学术期刊上，与其他的科学领域的学者交换意见。So Chinese scholars should have a good understanding of English and alsoshould practice English writing constantly so as to help them to be well-informed of thelatest developments and findings in the scientific fields and help them to publish theirresearch papers in international academic journals.In the whole English research paper, the abstract, as a mini version of the researcharticle (RA), signifies the essential content of the RA, thus it can be seen as a media andbridge for academic exchange and cooperation http://www.1daixie.com/dxyybylwall over the world. And it acts as kind of apassport for the national and international conferences and journals. So the abstractnowadays is a growing field of study in applied linguistics. Linguists show great interest inthe study of the RA abstract because they want to understand the mechanisms that underliethese multifunctional texts. There are lots of definitions of abstract. For example, theAmerican National Standards Institute (ANSI) defines Abstract as "an abbreviated andaccurate representation of the contents of a document, preferably prepared by its author(s)for publication with it" (ANSI, 1979).
"A well-prepared abstract can make readers to understand the basic content of aresearch paper or document quickly and accurately so as to determine whether the documentor RA is relevant for their interest, and then they will decide whether they want to read thedocument in its entirety or not." (American National Standard Institute, 1979) It is knownthat English is the already established language of international scientific communication;the non-native English speakers that want to obtain international recognition by means ofpublication of their scientific papers should necessarily have to adopt the internationalscientific writing conventions. Connor (1996) mentioned that the main reason of non-nativespeakers' lack of success in the international academic field is that most of them tend to beshort of awareness of such cross-cultural differences in general text http://www.1daixie.com/dxyybylwstructures and readerexpectations. Scholars who use English as a foreign or second language may have somedifficulties in stating the main contents of the RA precisely and comprehensively in an English abstract.Martin (2003) held that the English abstract acted as a time-saving device of telling thereaders about the major content of the whole research article and let them know in this waywhether the full text can arouse their further attention. And Lores (2004) considered Abstractas a gateway which is used to lead readers to pick up an article, journals to selectcontributions, or organizers of conferences to accept or reject the paper. In a word, theabstract undoubtedly deserves careful attention and study by Chinese scholars.
1.2 Research Purposes研究目的
As far as I am concerned, though there are lots of contrastive studies on abstracts of RAs inmany fields ( e.g. Ge Dongmei etal, 2005; Gao Liping, 2006; etc.), yet rare research has beendone to compare abstracts of research articles in English economic and management Papersof Chinese and NSE (native speakers of English) authors. And in view of contrastive studiesof RAs, many researches only investigate certain aspects of RA abstracts, for example, GeDongmei etal (2005) only compared move structure and certain linguistic features (tense,voice and modal verbs). And He Runqing (2004) only dealt with voice distribution and usefrequency of front weight sentence on abstracts of English articles in Chinese and foreignscientific and technical journals, so comprehensive contrastive study of English RA abstractby native speakers of English(NSE)and Chinese scholars of English (CSE) still remainrelatively unexplored, especially in the aspect of discoursal level as well as some linguisticfeatures in terms of tense, voice and modal verbs, though Gao Liping(2006) did a pioneeringwork by making a contrastive analysis in the field of scientific journals. Whether thefindings of those fields also apply to research articles of English economic and management papers or not is not sure. To answer this question, this study investigates the macro rhetoricalstructure and the micro linguistic features of research articles in English economic andmanagement Papers by analyzing 70 RA abstracts (35 by CSE and 35 by NSE) from fourangles: comparison of graphological features, theme and rheme differences, genrecomparison and certain linguistic features (tense, voices and model verbs). And its purpose isto draw the conclusions of similarities and differences between abstracts by CSE and NSE,and tries to find out the possible reasons for the differences, and thus provide an insight forEnglish and Chinese scholars to write better abstracts for international scientific field. Andthe result of the comparison and analysis can also help those teachers to provide studentswith useful suggestions in English abstract writing. At the same time, Chinese scholars andlanguage learners will become more critical and more perceptive readers of English RAabstracts and will compose RA abstracts that are most likely to be accepted by theinternational discourse community.
第二章文献回顾
2.1理论框架
本章的目的是要建立理论框架的研究。此外，对以往的研究论文摘要探究进行总结。体裁分析和对比修辞功能主位述位理论为本文奠定了理论基础，本章首先介绍了有关体裁理论、体裁分析，其次是对比修辞学的理论，然后是理论主题和述位。In the 1970s, the word genre was introduced into the field of linguistics. Since thattime, the concept of genre has been discussed by many scholars in this area (Martin, 1984;Swales, 1990 ；). However, the most popular definition of genre in the linguistic field is theone given by Swales (1990):'A genre comprises a class of communicative events, and themembers of these communicative events share some set of communicative purposes. Thesecommunicative purposes are recognized by the expert members of the parent discoursecommunity, and thus constitute the rationale for the genre. This principle shapes the generalstructure of the whole discourse and in a way influences and constrains the choice of contentand style. The communicative purpose is a privileged criterion as well as one that operates tokeep the scope of a genre as here conceived focused on comparable rhetorical action. Inaddition to the communicative purpose, the samples of a genre demonstrate various patternsof similarity in terms of structure, content, style, and intended audience'.
Chapter Three Methodology........................................ 27-31
3.1 Research Methods........................................ 27
3.2 Research Questions ........................................27
3.3 Procedures for Data Collection........................................ 27-28
3.3.1 Corpora Used in the Present Study........................................ 28
3.3.2 Selection Criteria for the Data........................................ 28
3.4 Procedures for Data Analysis........................................ 28-31
3.4.1 Tagging the Corpus........................................ 29
3.4.2 Data Processing........................................ 29-31
Chapter Four Results and Discussion ........................................31-53
4.1 Comparison of Graphological Features ........................................31-34
4.1.1 Number of Sentences........................................ 31-33
4.1.2 Length of Sentences ........................................33
4.1.3 Summary........................................ 33-34
4.2 Comparison of Move Structure........................................34-42
4.3 Comparison of Thematic Structure ........................................42-47
4.4 Certain Linguistic Features ........................................47-53
Chapter Five Conclusion........................................ 53-57
5.1 Major Findings........................................ 53-55
5.2 Implications........................................ 55-56
5.3 Weakness and Limitations........................................ 56
5.4 Suggestions for Future Research ........................................56-57
Conclusion结论
The purpose of this present study is to investigate the differences and similarities betweenEnglish Economic and Management Papers of Chinese and NSE Authors and to explore thereasons that result in these differences and similarities. So we conducted a contrastiveanalysis of 35 English Economic and Management Papers by NSE and 35 English Economicand Management Papers by CSE. We compared graphological features in the two corporaand the move structure of each corpus on the basis of the revised model established in thestudy; and, at the same time, we identified the thematic structure and thematic progression inboth corpora. In the end, certain linguist features such as tense, voice and modal verbs arealso analyzed.
On the aspect of graphologcal features, there are significant differences betweenCEEMP and IEEMP in the aspect of the length of abstract and the sentence number. Abstracts bynative speakers of English is about 1.3 times longer than those by Chinese scholars of English ， andthe sentence number of NSE is 1.4 times more than that by CSE. The differences might due todifferent requirements for Economic and Management papers in international conferencesand international academic field. Anther reason is perhaps the mother tongue interference.Chinese scholars usually have lower English proficiency level than NSE. Thus they willdefinitely have difficulties when they write scientific writings in English. When they begin to writeabstracts of this kind, they often translate literally their original Chinese abstract into English. Andsometimes they would neglect the standard abstract length for an English paper. However, CSE areone part of the international academic community, so they should learn one of the internationalconventions of academic journals, that is, the length of the abstract usually takes up 10% of theresearch context. They must also make sure their English abstracts cover about 10% of the wholeresearch paper. And they should learn to manage the whole text more logical and smooth.