A Study Of Thematic Structure In English Ras By Native And Chinese Writers

In today’s information age, publication of research findings is one of the productivevehicles for researchers to contribute to the international academic world. English, as theworld language, has been the dominating publishing language in prestigious internationaljournals. However, it has been found to be a particularly challenging task for researcherswho are non-native writers to report their findings in English to the international academicworld. This research intends to make a comparative study of thematic structure in Englishresearch articles (RAs) written by native writers and non-native writers with Chinese as themother tongue (or Chinese EFL writers), which may help non-native writers to have a betterunderstanding of thematic features in native English RAs. This study may give ChineseEFL (English as a Foreign Language) writers an insight into RA writing from the aspect ofthematic structure, improve their performances at reporting the findings in English forsuccessful publication internationally, thus getting more involved in international academiccommunication.This research starts with the textual function, one of the three metafunctions oflanguage in the area of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), and then reviews what hasbeen theorized and what has been demonstrated about Theme and Theme-related concepts,such as Given/New, Subject, and Topic, brought forward by Halliday and other influentialscholars (Halliday,1985/1994; Halliday&Martin,1993; Halliday&Matthiessen,2004;Thompson,1996/2004). To characterise thematising behavior in English RAs on anempirical rather than an impressionistic basis, this study compares English RAs written bynative and non-native writers to find out their similarities and differences in terms ofTheme realizations and thematic progression patterns, and tries to explore the underlyingfactors beneath the differences. Halliday’s theory of Theme-Rheme construct (1985,1994, 2004) and Dane’ theory of thematic progression (TP) pattern (1974) are the theoreticalframework in this study, which are adopted out of two reasons. First, while there are amultitude of comparative studies at the orthographic, lexical and grammatical levelsbetween native and non-native English RAs, not many have been carried out at the textuallevel from the perspective of thematic structure theory. Second, Halliday’s Theme-Rhemetheory provides a way to study what kind of elements writers/speakers choose as points ofdeparture of information at the clause level, while Dane’ theory of thematic progressionpatterns enables researchers to find out how the points of departure are picked up,elaborated on or abandoned in the following discourse beyond the clause level. Tocombine these two theories in the research allows the analyst to highlight thematicfeatures of RAs in a systemic way for purposes of comparison.A contrastive text analysis is adopted in this research, and the overall methodology isboth quantitative and qualitative. The materials for the analysis consist of two groups ofEnglish RAs, one group published internationally written by native writers and the othergroup published nationally by Chinese EFL writers studying linguistics and appliedlinguistics. The Introduction sections of all the RAs are focused on, and are selected in thefield of language leaning and teaching. In order to find out whether or not differences existin the employment of Theme realizations and thematic progression patterns in the twogroups of RAs, the Themes in each article is coded according to the classification systemprovided in the study, with respect to textual, interpersonal, topical Themes and theirsubcategories, and the meanings construed through such choices. The thematicprogression patterns between the successive Themes and Rhemes are detected.By means of the software SPSS and through the statistical analysis, the study yieldsthe following important findings. The first research question aims to answer how Themesare realized in native and non-native English RAs and their specific features. Both similarities and differences are revealed through the analysis of data.The similarities are as follows: simple Themes are more frequently used thanmultiple Themes in English RAs by both native and non-native writers. This finding isconsistent with the characteristics of academic writing as being concise and direct. TextualThemes are distributed with close percentage in both groups of articles, and additive andadversative relationships are used more frequently than any other type relationship.Concerning the use of markedness of Themes, unmarked Themes occur more frequentlythan marked ones. Among the different types of unmarked Themes, Subjects chosen asThemes are the natural priority of choice for both native and non-native writers. As for themarked Themes, circumstantial adjuncts and hypotactic enhancing clauses are the majortypes used in the two sets of data. In addition, circumstantial adjuncts are found to accountfor a large amount of marked Themes in both groups of RAs.The differences are summed up as follows: native English writers use twice moreinterpersonal Themes in their texts than non-native writers do, and among them projectingclauses as interpersonal Themes are seldom used in non-native texts. Different types oftextual Themes are chosen by native and non-native writers. In native texts, of all theconjunctive adjuncts8.28%fall into the category of the causal relationship, while in thenon-native texts the causal relationship accounts for22.60%. Native writers use morecircumstantial adjuncts of “place”,“manner”,“contingency”,“role” and “angle” thannon-native writers, whereas less of “cause”,“time”,“accompaniment”,“matter” andothers. Moreover, most frequently used hypotactic enhancing clauses in native texts areconditional clauses, and by contrast causal clauses are used much more in non-nativetexts.When it comes to the second research question of thematic progression patternsemployed by native and non-native writers in their texts, the findings show that more Constant Theme Patterns are used than the Simple Linear Theme Patterns in the analysisof sample native English RA. However, in the sample of non-native article, the SimpleLinear Theme Patterns are employed with high frequency. Concerning the overalldistribution of TP patterns in RAs, the results indicate that the Constant Theme Patternsand the Simple Linear Theme Patterns are the major occurring TP patterns. Moreover,native writers use more Constant Theme Patterns than the Simple Linear Theme Patterns.In comparison, non-native writers tend to use more Simple Linear Theme Patterns thanConstant Theme Patterns in their English RAs. Moreover, there are fewer occurrences ofTP patterns in the successive Themes and Rhemes in non-native English RAs.Through the comparative study of thematic realizational forms and thematicprogression patterns in native and non-native English RAs, this research finds out certainsimilarities and differences in their textual organizations of information. The author triesto explore the factors leading to the differences from the aspects of transfer (languagetransfer, cultural transfer) and lack of target language knowledge (register, textualorganization). This research can provide a systematic way to study thematic structure inthe textual organization of RAs in the future. In addition, the author suggests in Englishteaching, especially in academic reading and writing classes, teachers may introduce theconcept of thematic structure from the perspectives of the realizational forms of Themesand TP patterns.