Promotional Strategies Embedded In The Generic Structure Of Chinese And American Doctoral Dissertation Abstracts

Promotion in academic genres means that academic writers apply linguistic strategies to persuade their readers to accept their research and research achievements.In recent years,the promotional function of academic abstracts has attracted increasing attention of scholars in the field of applied linguistics.However,previous research mostly focused on the abstracts of research articles(RAs).Research on the abstracts of dissertation,especially doctoral dissertation is limited.Doctoral candidates are “novice writers” in the field of scientific research.Investigating their doctoral dissertations can provide guidance for teaching future “expert writers” in academic writing.Therefore,this thesis compares the promotional strategies embedded in the generic structure of Chinese and American doctoral dissertation abstracts(DDAs),with the hope of offering reference guidelines on how to linguistically construct promotional strategies in Chinese doctoral candidates’ dissertation abstract writing in English.The current study collects 120 doctoral dissertation abstracts in applied linguistics written in English by American(L1 English)and Chinese(L2 English)students,and builds two comparable corpora - L1 & L2 DDAs.Based on Hyland’s(2004)five-move model of RA abstracts and Yu’s(2016)seven-move model of Ph.D.abstracts,a revised six-move model is proposed to investigate the generic structure of doctoral dissertation abstracts.Lindeberg’s(2004)theoretical framework of promotion in academic abstracts is adopted to analyze the promotional strategies embedded in the generic structure and their linguistic realizations.This study addresses two questions:(1)What are the similarities and/or differences in the generic structure of Chinese and American doctoral dissertation abstracts in applied linguistics?(2)What are the similarities and/or differences concerning the promotional strategies embedded in the generic structure of Chinese and American doctoral dissertation abstracts in applied linguistics?The findings demonstrate that:(1)Concerning the generic structure,the common choices of obligatory moves(Thesis,Method,and Product),the opening moves(Introduction or Thesis)and the ending move(Conclusion or Structure)are shared in L1 & L2 DDAs.However,difference lies in the choice of rhetorical move patterns.A greater number of conventional move patterns are found in L2 DDAs,while more unconventional move patterns are found in L1 DDAs.(2)Regarding the promotional strategies embedded in the generic structure,Chinese and American students share the common preference for three direct promotional strategies — Claims of centrality(CC),Statements of knowledge gaps(SG),and Boosts of the writers’ contribution(BC),and one of the indirect promotional strategies including Assessment of reliability(AR).The use of three indirect promotional strategies — Comparing results to previous study(CR),Proposing the counterclaim(CTC),Supporting hypothesis(SH)— is scarce.Generally,the linguistic realizations of the promotional strategies in both corpora are predominately realized in the conventional move patterns,however,a greater number of that in L1 DDAs are realized in the unconventional move patterns of L1 DDAs.In addition,although a greater number of direct promotional strategies appear in L2 DDAs,their linguistic realizations of the promotional strategies are less salient than those in L1 DDAs.This study is conducive to verifying and supplementing previous research on the promotional strategies of dissertation abstracts,and offers pedagogical implications for the teaching of dissertation abstract writing.