A Contrastive Study Of Text-oriented Bundles In English PhD Dissertations By Chinese And NSE Writers

Lexical bundles are important components of fluent linguistic production and academic writing.The discourse-organizing functions of lexical bundles in academic texts indicates the importance of the study of this type of formulaic language from the perspective of textual organization and discourse structures.This dissertation is a systematic corpus-based study of text-oriented bundles in English PhD dissertations by Chinese EFL writers and NSE(native-speaker-of-English)writers,with a view to characterizing their most prominent structural,functional,and discoursal features.Theoretically set in Sinclairian lexical grammar theory and Hallidayan metafunctions of language,this study adopts the contrastive interlanguage analysis to elaborate the similarities and discrepancies between Chinese EFL writers and NSE writers in applying text-oriented bundles to organize discourse structure,enhance textual cohesion,and fulfill communicative purposes in academic writing.This study has not only contributed to a better understanding of how text-oriented bundles are employed by native and non-native academic writers,but also produced a practical list of text-oriented bundles which is a valuable resource that can facilitate the selection of multi-word units for a variety of didactic applications.Results of this study have shown that text-oriented bundles are moderately common in native writers' academic writing,comprising a variety of three-or four-word bundles,with their specific grammatical or structural patterns.Native writers use text-oriented bundles to perform three types of organizations: discourse acts,such as comparing,inferring,text deixis,framing,citation,presenting views/facts/results,and specifying objectives;general logical marking,such as additive,causative,contrastive,and inferential signals;and organizing discourse structures.The analysis of text-oriented bundles used in each rhetorical move reveals the co-selective relationship between linguistic patterns and discourse structures.Text-oriented bundles,which become signals of concrete functions and textual structures,are the linguistic realizations or devices of discourse organization in academic texts.Data in this study also demonstrate the features of text-oriented bundles used in Chinese writers' English PhD dissertations.Chinese writers significantly underuse the target bundles,showing inadequate formulaic characteristics of language and less conventionality of academic genres.There is a statistically significant overuse of “prepositional phrase+of-fragment” bundles and underuse of most structural types,which limits the structural diversity of target bundles in the non-native writing.Chinese writers show noticeable discrepancies in performing several discourse acts and signaling certain logical connections and relations in comparison to the native writers.Another remarkable difference between the two corpora is the apparent overuse in non-natives' corpus of commonly used bundles and underuse of comparatively less frequent bundles,which indicates that Chinese writers make different choices of multi-word units in performing specific discourse functions.Results also demonstrate Chinese writers' lack of the awareness of organizing text structures,coupled with the underuse of signaling bundles in discourse structures,which leads to the deficiencies in constructing discoursal coherence and well-organized structures in their academic writing.The present study may yield insights and implications in the elaboration of co-selection at multiple levels,the systematic description of discourse functions of text-oriented bundles,the methodology of integrating the study of language use and rhetorical structure analysis in academic texts and the EAP teaching and writing in China.