Contrastive Genre Analysis Of Discussion Sections In English And Chinese Research Articles

In the past twenty years, genre and generic analysis have become a hot topic in the field of linguistics. Much genre analysis of different types of discourses has been carried out in the academic and professional settings. The particular genre of research article has received much attention. However, most studies focused on the introduction of research articles. Limited research effort has been devoted to discussion section despite the fact that it is an important part. To our knowledge, no contrastive ESP genre analysis has been reported on the comparison of discussion sections written by Chinese writers and English writers.The present study was based on the 40 discussion sections of English and Chinese linguistic research articles. It applied Swales(1990)' Move-Step analysis approach (our revised Core-Extension model based on Yang & Allison's work in 2003) to analyzing the macrostructure of the Chinese discussion sections and English ones. Some linguistic features—hedges, the average number of words in each paragraph and in each sentence were also being investigated. Meanwhile, SPSS12.0 program was applied to analyze the collected data, and independent samples T-text was applied to test the general hypothesis and the subordinate hypotheses.The thesis concludes that English and Chinese discussion sections have similarities and differences in both macro-structure and linguistic features. The results of the present study are:(1) In the aspect of macrostructure of LRA discussion sections, most English discussion sections follow the pattern of Cr+Cm+Ct, while most Chinese discussion sections follow the pattern of the only one Core—Cr. Therefore, Cr is an obligatory core in the two corpora. The content of English discussion sections is richer than that of Chinese ones.(2) The average number of words in each paragraph and in each sentence in Chinese discussion sections is significantly larger than those in English ones. This difference is perhaps due to the inner features of these two languages.(3) The occurrence frequencies of hedges in English discussion sections are higher than those in Chinese discussion sections. In the order of modal auxiliary, main verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and nouns in the two corpora, they decreased in their numerical value.The findings of the present study can help LRA writers better understand the characteristics of the macrostructure and linguistic features of discussion sections in the two corpora and improve their awareness of conventional structures and features in their writing process.