A Contrastive Study Of Metadiscourse Markers In The Conclusion Sections Of American And Chinese Master And PhD Dissertations In Linguistics

With the emergence of corpus linguistics,the researches on metadiscourse have attracted more and more scholars at home and abroad.Different from the former studies on the abstract,introduction and the discussion sections of the research articles,this thesis mainly focuses on the contrastive analysis of metadiscourse in the conclusion section of American and Chinese Master and PhD dissertations in linguistics through two self-built corpora:Chinese Linguistics Master and PhD Dissertations Corpus(CLMPDC)and American Linguistics Master and PhD Dissertations Corpus(ALMPDC).The author applies quantitative and qualitative analysis to study metadiscourse in the two corpora with the help of Perl,FoxPro and SPSS etc.This thesis aims to find out the features and problems of the use of metadiscourse markers in Chinese master and PhD dissertations of English linguistics so that they can better understand and master the use of metadiscourse markers.The study finally concludes that in general,American postgraduates and PhD students and Chinese postgraduates and PhD students both employ a great number of metadiscourse markers.But the interactional metadiscourse markers used in CLMPDC are much fewer than those in ALMPDC;For interactive metadiscourse markers,transitions,frame markers and endophoric markers exhibit great variations in ALPMDC and CLMPDC,which lies in the significant difference in the use of expressions of addition,sequencing and non-linear and linear sentences.For interactional metadiscourse markers,there are significant differences in the use of hedges,engagement markers and self-mentions in these two corpora.The specific differences are shown as follows:Chinese postgraduates and PhD students employ fewer hedges obviously than American postgraduates and PhD students do.The engagement markers Chinese and American postgraduates and PhD students use mostly belong to directives but their frequencies differ.Different from Chinese postgraduates and PhD students'preference of the third person,American postgraduates and PhD students tend to use the first person pronouns to express individualism.This research finds that Chinese postgraduates and PhD students' vagueness in understanding the meaning,logic links and lack of register awareness is the major reason for the disparity of using metadiscourse markers in their dissertations.