Genre Analysis Of Introduction Sections Of English Research Articles In Legal Science

With the deepening of opening up, exchanges between Chinese and internationallegal field are increasing day by day. Research articles have become important ways toexchange information, improve legal systems and solve legal disputes. To bring Chineselegal researches to the world and be recognized by international counterparts, a priorityis to publish high-level research articles in important international magazines. As aresult, it is urgent for Chinese legal scholars to understand the writing differencesbetween Chinese and English legal research articles and grasp the writing norms ofEnglish legal research articles. As the opening of research articles, introductions playmany roles of opening the whole passage, establishing research niche and leadingauthors. They reflect certain communicative purposes and have unique organizingprinciples. CARS model is an effective way to analyze introductions of research articles,so this thesis will apply revised CARS model to analyze genre characteristics ofintroductions of English legal research articles in the perspective of Chinese andEnglish contrastive analysis.This thesis collects60articles from domestic and international authoritative lawjournals and builds a small corpus of English and Chinese legal research articlesintroductions which has60,480words. English journals include Harvard InternationalLaw Journal, The Yale Journal of International Law, Michigan Law Review and so on.Chinese journals include China Legal Science, Chinese Journal of Law and Studies inLaw and Business and so on. And then this thesis concludes the frequency anddistribution of each move and step of English and Chinese legal RA articles, andworked out a revised CARS model for English legal RA introductions. After that, thisthesis discusses differences of moves and steps between Chinese and English legal RAintroductions and explores underlying reasons for these differences.The results indicate that there are remarkable differences in macro moves andmicro steps between Chinese and English legal research articles introductions, anddifferences in writing methods, values and ways of thinking are main causes fordifferences of introductions.(1) Foreign scholars tend to use author-responsible way ofwriting while most domestic scholars use reader-responsible way of writing. Foreignscholars elaborate their viewpoints and present the reasoning process in detail so thatthe article has clear viewpoints and organization. In contrast, domestic scholars tend to write vaguely and generally, so readers have to figure out the research area and articleorganization by themselves.(2) Western individualism advocates negative politeness, sowhen foreign scholars review previous researches, they are direct and objective. Theyemphasize other scholars’ contributions as well as deficiencies to highlight the necessityof their researches. In contrast, positive politeness that eastern collectivism advocatesmakes domestic scholars take into account other scholars’ faces and avoid evaluatingother scholars’ research results when reviewing previous researches.(3) Foreignscholars prefer direct and clear ways of writing. They attach importance to rigorouslogics and clear organization. However, domestic scholars tend to write circuitously.They give readers more space and move forward the research articles slowly.This research improves the theory of genre analysis, enriches studies that combineCARS model and legal filed, and expands researches of legal research articlesintroductions. At the same time, it reveals writing differences between Chinese andEnglish legal research articles introductions, as well as the cultural and thinkingdifferences of different language backgrounds. This research can help Chinese legalscholars master writing norms of English legal research articles.