Genre Analysis Of Conclusion Sections In MA Theses Written By Chinese Postgraduates Majoring In English

The earliest concept of genre can be dated back to Plato and Aristotle’s classification of culture, and be introduced to the field of linguistic research by John-Swales in1981. Recently, genre and genre analysis have become the popular topic in the research of English for specific purpose and academic English. Previous genre analysis of academic discourse mostly concentrated in the abstract, introduction, literature review of the thesis, but there is relatively few genre analysis of conclusion. Conclusion is an important part of academic thesis, which plays the role of summarizing, presenting the results and putting forward opinions and suggestions about further study, etc. Through reading the conclusion of academic paper, readers can clearly know the results and contributions of the study. Therefore, it plays an important role to analyze the conclusion of thesis, understand its composition structure and linguistic features, and write a better conclusion.Considering the importance of conclusion in dissertation and the insufficiency of related research, this study aims to describe accurately the generic structure and the features of the conclusion in MA theses in order to support some help for English majors to write MA thesis. This paper analyzes30excellent MA theses written by postgraduates majoring in applied linguistics based on Swales and Bhatia’s Move Models and Hasan’s Generic Structure Potential, and instructed by move structures put forward by Moritz, Meurer and Dellagnelo as well as Bunton, etc. Through qualitative analysis and quantitative test, this study shows the generic structure, the sequence and ratio of moves in the conclusion as well as the linguistic features of conclusion in the dissertation. The results indicate that there are five moves, in which Move3is the most frequent one. Because the frequencies of occurrence of Move1to Move4are all above50%, they are obligatory moves. Move5is optional move. The analysis of sequence of moves shows that Move1and Move2often appear at the beginning of conclusion section; Move4and Move5often appear at the end of the concluding chapter; intermediate moves are changeful. In this research, two move patterns are found:linear pattern and cyclical pattern. All the moves can all be repeated except Move5. Move4is repeated most frequently. Linguistic features of conclusion sections are carried out from tense and model verbs. The results show that simple present tense possesses the highest percentage in every move. There are15.6model verbs per100verbs. Can is the most frequent model verb in conclusion sections.Through genre analysis, this thesis summarizes the generic structure and the linguistic features of the conclusion in MA dissertations written by postgraduate majoring in applied linguistics, helping people to know the structure of conclusion in MA thesis and understand how the conclusion achieve its communicative purpose relying on the generic structure. The generic structure of the conclusion in MA dissertations includes five moves:Move1:The introductory statement; Move2: Consolidating the research space; Move3:Evaluating the study; Move4:Making deductions from the research; Move5:Concluding statement.