A Critical Contrastive Analysis Of Writer's Identity Construction In The Abstracts Of English And Chinese Academic Papers

As a newly-emerging approach to discourse analysis,critical discourse analysis(CDA,hereafter)is firstly put forward by R.Fowler et al in the book Language and Control(Fowler et al,1979).It takes much interest in the interrelationship among language,power and ideology.The main linguistic basis of CDA is Halliday's systemic-functional grammar(SFG for short)(Shi Guang,2007).And recently,the construction of writer's identity in academic papers is a hot issue which has been discussed in many fields from various angles.However,there are few scholars making studies on it from the angle of CDA.Based on all of these,taking the relevant theories of Halliday's SFG as theoretical tools,this thesis conducts a critical contrastive analysis of the writer's identity construction in 70 abstracts of English and Chinese academic papers with 35 abstracts each.The data are all randomly selected from the Modern Language Journal and the Foreign Language Teaching and Research with time ranging from 2013 to 2017.From a perspective of CDA,by dint of the quantitative and qualitative methods,this thesis intends to discuss the similarities and differences of the writer's identity construction in the abstracts of English and Chinese academic papers.To achieve that,this thesis has the following questions to figure out:(1)What kind of ideology is embodied respectively in the abstracts of English and Chinese academic papers? And what are the similarities and differences?(2)What kind of discursive power is embodied respectively in the abstracts of English and Chinese academic papers? And what are the similarities and differences?(3)What kind of writer's identity is constructed respectively in the abstracts of English and Chinese academic papers according to the two questions above? And what are the similarities and differences?Through working out the three questions above,this thesis draws the following conclusions:On the embodiment of ideology: 1)In terms of transitivity system,there are some similarities and differences.Firstly,material process occurs the most frequently in both English and Chinese data(with 75.3% in English and 46.4% in Chinese).The high frequency of material process in both English and Chinese data embodies that both English and Chinese scholars intend to convince readers of their researching activities.Secondly,the uses of relational,mental,verbal and existential processes in both English and Chinese data(with 24.7% in English and 53.6% in Chinese)embodies that both English and Chinese scholars intend to express their opinions towards themselves' or other's researches.However,there is a sharp difference of 28.9% in the frequency of material process in the English and Chinese data.As a result,the degree of the intention to convince readers of their researching activities is different.English scholars ideologically pay more attention to their researching activities while Chinese scholars pay almost the same attention to introducing their researching activities and expressing their opinions.2)In terms of voice,there are only differences.Firstly,passive voice occurs the most frequently in the English data(with 66.1%)while active voice takes up the percentage of 100% in the Chinese data.Secondly,English scholars consciously intend to make the readers focus on certain aspects of their researches by voice transformation.While Chinese scholars only adopt active voice to avoid negative feelings in abstracts in that the “Bei” construction which realizes the passive voice in Chinese carries certain negative meanings.3)In terms of thematic structure,there are some similarities.Marked theme occurs the most frequently in both English and Chinese data(with 63.2% in English and 80.1% in Chinese).The high frequency of marked theme in both English and Chinese data indicates that both English and Chinese scholars ideologically intend to construct the discourse in a concise and coherent way so that the readers can achieve a better understanding.However,there are also some differences.Firstly,English scholars tend to adopt marked theme which expresses the meaning of manner to compact clauses.The Chinese scholars,however,tend to employ marked theme which expresses the meaning of time and space to construct situational context and co-context for their abstracts.Secondly,considering the sharp difference of 16.9% in the frequency of marked theme in English and Chinese data,the degree of the intention to construct discourse in a concise and coherent way is also different.Chinese scholars ideologically focus more on discourse construction than English scholars.On the embodiment of discursive power: 1)in terms of mood,there are some similarities and differences.Firstly,declarative mood occurs the most frequently in both English and Chinese data(with 94% in English and 100% in Chinese)which corresponds to the requirement of academic writing.However,as a potential resource of discursive power,interrogative mood only occurs in the English data which embodies that English scholars have higher discursive power than Chinese scholars.2)In terms of subjective modality,explicit subjective modality which occurs frequently in the English data(80.5%),presents one's authority and power.While the implicit subjective modality which occurs frequently in the Chinese data(92.9%)represents limited discursive power.Based on this,the high frequency of explicit subjective modality in the English data indicates that English scholars have higher discursive power than Chinese scholars.Based on the embodiment of ideology and discursive power above,conclusions on the construction of writer's identity can be drawn as follows: 1)in terms of ideology,firstly,both English and Chinese scholars ideologically tend to convince the readers that they are actually doing some researches.They all construct a writer's identity of “researcher”.However,the difference in the degree of such consciousness indicates that the writer's identity of “researcher” of English scholars is more obvious than that of Chinese scholars.Secondly,English scholars consciously tend to make the readers focus on certain aspects of their researches by voice transformation.Thus,they construct a writer's identity of “information-reorganizer”.Thirdly,both English and Chinese scholars ideologically tend to construct the discourse in a concise and coherent way so that the readers can achieve a better understanding.In this case,they all construct a writer's identity of “discourse-constructor”.However,there is also difference in the degree of such consciousness between the English and Chinese scholars.The writer's identity of “discourse-constructor” of Chinese scholars is more obvious than that of English scholars.2)In terms of discursive power,firstly,the higher discursive power embodied by the use of interrogative mood in the English data help English scholars construct a writer's identity of “controller”.Secondly,the higher discursive power embodied by the use of explicit subjective modality in the English data helps the English scholars construct a writer' identity of “explicit expert”.However,the limited discursive power embodied by the use of implicit subjective modality helps Chinese scholars construct a writer's identity of “implicit expert”.This thesis provides a new perspective to the study of academic identity construction.It can not only enhance critical language awareness of readers but offers enlightenments to the development of academic writing of Chinese scholars as well.