Comparative Study On The Rhetorical Functions Of Citations In English Academic Articles Written By Chinese And Western Scholars

English academic writing is an important channel for knowledge communication andinformation exchange. Therefore, it is important for Chinese scholars who want to publishtheir academic works in international journals to be familiar with the method of applyingrhetorical function of citation. Based on B. Petric’s study on the typology of rhetoricalfunctions of citation, this study tries to find out whether there are significant differencesbetween Chinese and western scholars’ academic writings of each rhetorical function ofcitation by using Independent Samples T-test. Corpora of20published English academicwritings written by Chinese and western scholars in linguistics are analyzed in terms oflength and frequency. The results show that the density of citation in Chinese scholars’’ worksis a little higher than that in western scholars’. As for the frequency, attribution is the mostfrequently used type of rhetorical function of citation in both Chinese and western scholars’academic writings, but it is used much more in Chinese scholars’ works than in westernscholars’. In addition, by using qualitative analysis, Chinese scholars’ proficiency of usingrhetorical functions of citation is a little bit lower than that of western scholars. The findingscan be used to provide guidance and suggestion for Chinese scholars in academic writing inthe future.