A Data-based Study On The Citation Practices In English RAs

Citation has long been an interest of scholars in the language study.It has been discussed from different perspectives in terms of the information cited,the linguistic resources used to signal citations and the functions performed by citation in academic discourse.But the actual use of citations tends to be more complex and more various than the description of citations in the model proposed by previous scholars,which is also confirmed by the author’s pilot study.In order to get a clearer picture about the use of citation practices in research articles(RAs),we adopted a data-based approach in this study.To ensure that we are exposed to a variety of RAs written by different authors and on different topics,we set up a corpus of 80 research articles collected from 40 leading journals in eight disciplines,with a total number of 505,223 words.Through observation and analysis on the information cited,the resources used to signal citations and functions achieved by citation,we come to the findings as follows:First,the information cited in RAs is mainly concerned with topic,concept,theory,methodology,result,opinion,formula and table.The most cited information in RAs includes opinion,result and methodology.It can be verbal or non-verbal in form,of which the tables are cited commonly in RAs.However,the information cited in non-verbal form was seldom mentioned in previous studies.Secondly,the resources used to signal citations are presented in a variety of forms at different linguistic levels.Of them,lexical resources are the most active ones to signal citations,followed by graphological and syntactic resources.At the lexical level,citation is usually manifested through the use of reporting verbs,reporting nouns,prepositional phrases and reporting adjectives,of which reporting verbs are the most frequently used.This is consistent with previous studies on the use of reporting verbs.At the syntactic level,attributive clauses and adverbial clauses are the main forms to signal citation,especially AS clauses.The resources at the graphological level include the use of punctuation and paragraphing.Thirdly,the citations in RAs are mainly used to achieve the functions of attribution,exemplification,further reference,statement of use,application,evaluation,establishment of links between research and comparison.Attribution and establishment of links between studies are the most frequently used functions.Most of the citations performed only one function.But there were still a number of citations performing more than one function.And this study further finds that citations which perform more than one function mainly perform the functions of exemplification and establishment of links between studies at the same time.The data-based findings may provide some evidence and reference for further studies on citation practices as well as provide some help in the teaching and learning about the proper use of citations in academic writing.