1 Introduction
The studies on reporting range from types to rhetorical functions. A wide rangeof researches on reporting have been done due to its important role in RAs (Swales,1990; Halliday, 1994; Petric, 2007).A general picture of the thesis, including the research background, purpose andlayout is presented in this chapter.
1.1 Research Background
RA is a scientific conclusion with the latest research findings which plays a rolein promoting communication in academic world. The research on RAs is one of themost popular topics in applied linguistics in recent years, especially in the field ofEnglish for Specific Purposes (ESP). A wide range of researches have been done inanalyzing the linguistic features of RAs such like tense, voice, hedging and reporting.Reporting, as the most commonly used interaction method, maximizes theinformation transmission between authors and readers. O’Leary (2008) pointed outthat reporting is seen as providing a hint of the significance of a given thesis in thedevelopment of subsequent theses and the entire group of research of interest. It isrelated to establishing contact with other literature, showing professional knowledgeand integrating perspectives of other authors into existing RAs. It can illustrateachievements and drawbacks of existing research to support the author’s point of view,show the author’s attitude towards the reporting content through reporting verbs,adjectives, etc., establish objectivity, feasibility and academic authority (Charles, 2006;Thompson & Tribble, 2001).
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1.2 Research Purpose and Significance
It is still not easy for the Chinese authors to apply reporting appropriately.Improper use can cause plagiarism doubts and lead to misunderstanding. At present,there is no systematic information on how to use reporting. Therefore, this thesis aimsto make a corpus-based contrastive analysis on reporting in English RAs by theChinese and the native English authors in mining engineering journals. The detailedanalysis concentrates on types, grammatical features and rhetorical functions ofreporting in order to find similarities and differences between the Chinese and thenative English authors in reporting application. The purpose is to provide suggestionsfor the Chinese authors to apply reporting properly in their RAs and help them to better communicate in the international academic world.
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2 Literature Review
This chapter briefly reviews the definitions, types, grammatical features andrhetorical functions of reporting. The previous studies on these aspects are discussedin this chapter.
2.1 Definition of Reporting
Reporting is common in people’s spoken and written language. Bakhtin pointedout that “all words spoken by some people in daily life, more than half are attributedto someone else, and people talk most of what others talk about—they pass on, repeat,evaluate and make judgment on other people’s ideas, viewpoints and declarations”(1981, p.294). Except for analyzing reporting phenomenon in daily life, scholarsgradually arouse interest in studying this linguistic phenomenon in academicdiscourse.Reporting in academic discourse has experienced diachronic changes. Theaverage reporting number was only 1.5 in each article in Physical Review in 1910.The number was up to 25 in 1980 (Hyland, 2000). The author finds that the averagenumber has reached to 31 in 2014 by analyzing the RAs in three mining engineeringjournals. Symbols of reporting that represent ownership depend on differentrequirements for different journals and are roughly pided into two types. The firsttype is bracket, placing the source in or after the sentence, including the author’sname, year of publication, etc. The other one is adding the endnotes on the sentence tomark the reporting source.
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2.2 Type of Reporting
Type is the first to have been studied in the field of reporting. Thompson (1994)classified reporting into three different categories: quotation or direct speech, indirectspeech and reporting. The direct speech is a sentence (or several sentences) thatrepeats speech or thought in its original form phrased by the original speaker. It isusually enclosed in quotation marks, such as: She said, “I like singing English songsvery much.”; The second one is a means of expressing the content of statements,questions or other utterances, without quoting them explicitly as is done in directspeech, e.g. She said that she liked English songs very much; The last one is known asciting relevant literature in articles, e.g. Previous work shows that the pore is moredeveloped with higher maturity.Swales (1990) further pided the type of reporting into integral reporting and non-integral reporting. The integral reporting refers to that the author name ofreporting source appears in the sentence, and served as a grammatical element,publication date or page numbers is marked in parentheses after the name. Thenon-integral reporting means the author name of reporting source does not appear inthe sentence structure. It always appears in parentheses or in the form of markednumber on the top right of the sentence. The integral name could be the subject of thewhole sentence, expressed by the passive voice or in the form of noun phrasepossessive.
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3 Research Methodology........13
3.1 Theoretical Framework.......13
3.2 Research Questions.............14
3.3 Data Collection..........14
3.4 Research Procedure.............16
3.5 Sample Analysis........16
4 Results and Discussion........ 21
4.1 Overall Distribution of Reporting in Two Corpora............21
4.2 Distribution of Reporting............. 21
5 Conclusion.........41
5.1 Major Findings..........41
5.2 Implications.....42
5.3 Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research....43
4 Results and Discussion
4.1 Overall Distribution of Reporting in Two Corpora
Reporting is applied frequently in the two Corpora. With the equal number ofRAs in two Corpora, the total running words indicate that the selected RAs by thenative English authors are a little longer than that of the Chinese authors on average.In order to have a close research on frequency, the author presents the number oftokens in 10000 words. The frequency of Corpus 2 is higher than Corpus 1. FromTable 4-2, the author sees a significant difference in reporting tokens between Corpus1 and Corpus 2. The number of reporting in Corpus 2 is higher than Corpus 1,indicating that the Chinese authors underuse reporting in RAs. The detaileddifferences are presented in the following analysis.
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Conclusion
The thesis is to find the differences in RAs written by the Chinese and the nativeEnglish authors in the field of mining engineering, and to shed light on pedagogy andacademic writing for learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). In this Chapter,the distinguishing characteristics and contrastive results are summarized. Theimplications of the findings and limitations of the present study are presented as well.The answers to the three research questions which are mentioned in Chapter 3are as follows.For the first question, both the token and the frequency of reporting in Corpus 2are higher than in Corpus 1 with a significant difference. The statistics indicates thatthe reporting is underused by the Chinese authors. Reporting is applied to reviewprevious research procedures or findings and build up the new research framework forauthors. It is the foundation of RAs which needs to be focused on during theseswriting. In comparison with the native English authors, the application of reporting isnot enough in English RAs written by the Chinese authors. The Chinese authorsshould realize the significance of reporting and make adequate research preparation,especially collect enough relevant literature before writing a RA.For the second question, the major differences in two Corpora lie in thereporting verbs, adjectives, adverbs and rhetorical functions. The distinctive attitudestowards the reporting content with reporting signals are more frequently expressed bythe native English authors. They are more likely to show their agreement with theoriginal authors’ viewpoints. However, the Chinese authors tend to show littleattitudes to the reporting content. The cultural difference between China and the westis the major reason. In western countries, people are encouraged to express theiropinions and raise doubts bravely and freely since their childhood. The free andcreative thinking pattern is deeply rooted in their mind and has a profound effect ontheir whole life. The doctrine of moderation in Confucianism is deeply rooted in ourmind and our behavior which is affected by this principle. The two opposite thinkingpatterns lead to the different attitudes to the reporting content and the original authors.
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The reference (omitted)