A Corpus-based Study Of Disciplinary Variations Of Evaluative That Constructions In Academic Research Abstracts

The interpersonal features of the research papers have been one of the mostproductive areas of discourse studies and now form an important element of many ESPcourses. However, there is a relatively overlooked interpersonal feature, which callsevaluative that construction. This structure allows a writer to show his attitudinalmeanings and offer an explicit statement of evaluation through presenting a complementclause in a super-ordinate clause.The study established Education corpus, Physics corpus and Mechanics corpus,representing Arts, Science and Engineering, which consist of published research articleswritten in English by native speakers. It explores the disciplinary variations in thefrequencies, classifications and functions of evaluative that structures in359researcharticle abstracts from three disciplines in order to compare the differences betweenacademic writers in the field of soft and hard disciplines in employing that clauses. Theevaluative that structures consist of four parts: the evaluative entity, the evaluative source,the evaluative stance and the evaluative expression. This study will further research on thecharacteristics of the four categories in the three disciplines.The findings are as follows: in the three disciplines (Education, Physics andMechanics) of academic research paper, the evaluative that structures are widelyemployed and are mainly used to provide authors’ comment and evaluation. And in softdiscipline (Education), the frequency of evaluative that structure is higher than the othertwo hard disciplines (Physics, Mechanics). The categories of author’s own findings inevaluative entity, abstract entity in evaluative source, epistemic stance in evaluative stanceand verbal expressions in evaluative expression are favored by the authors whether in softdisciplines or hard disciplines. And in writings of hard sciences, stance of certainty take up the largest proportion, while in writings of soft knowledge, stance of doubt take up thelargest proportion.The findings regarding to the characteristics of evaluative that structures in threecorpora enrich studies on that clauses used in various disciplines, and provide significantguidance for EAP teaching.