A Comparative Genre Analysis Of English MA Thesis Introductions In Linguistics

Since the last century,with the development and improvement of genre theory,there has been increasing interests on the generic structure of academic papers.As the most indispensable and crucial part in academic papers,the generic structure of introduction has been deeply investigated by scholars at home and abroad.However,very few of them have tried to explore the differences between the generic structures and linguistics features of MA thesis introductions written by writers from different cultural backgrounds.To fully investigate both generic structure and linguistic features of MA thesis introductions written by postgraduates from different cultural backgrounds,genre-based and corpus-based approaches were carried out to explore the generic structure(macro-level)and linguistic features(micro-level)of MA thesis introductions in the framework known as the Swales' CARS model(1990).Data consisted of 50 MA theses in Linguistics collected from Guizhou Province(2012-1017)and 50 MA theses in Linguistics collected from Pro-Quest(2012-2017).With respect to macro level,move frequency,move combinations and move cycles were investigated to outline the generic structures of MA thesis introductions of both groups.With respect to micro level,Coh-Metrix and Range were adopted to find out the linguistic features of MA thesis introductions.The results of this study can be summarized as: all three moves identified by CARS model occur in these two groups although they are unevenly distributed in each group.In terms of generic structure,postgraduates in Linguistics in Guizhou Province focus more on Move 3 “Occupying the niche”;however,postgraduates in Linguistics of native English speakers focus on Move 1 “Establishing the territory”;As for Move 2,postgraduates in Linguistics in Guizhou Province only adopt one Step “Indicating a gap” while postgraduates in Linguistics of native English speakers employ two steps “Indicating a gap” and “Question-raising” when writing introductions;Postgraduates in Linguistics of native English speakers are not only specialized in using move combination and cycles,they are also better in applying various and different steps compared with postgraduates in Linguistics in Guizhou Province who are more likely using the same step in each move.In terms of linguistic features,postgraduates in Linguistics in Guizhou Province still lack the ability to fully express and explain the ideas and views when writing introductions;however,postgraduates of native English speakers use longer and more complicate syntactic structures to illustrate their topics sufficiently and highlight the central ideas of their MA thesis introductions.Moreover,postgraduates in Linguistics in Guizhou Province still rely heavily on the most commonly used words and sub-common words,while academic words are underused by them.Based the findings above,the present study outlines generic structures of MA thesis introductions written by postgraduates in Linguistics in Guizhou Province and explores linguistic features of this specific genre.It also sheds lights on adopting both genre-based and corpus-based methods in further investigations.Moreover,it provides an index for the assessment of introduction writing and a guidance for students to organize their introductions' writing.