A Comparative Study Of Chinese And American Authors' SCI Abstracts On Electric Power Engineering

Based on Santos' five-move structure and Schmid's theory of shell nouns,we go deep into the steps after classifying macro move structure and analyze the patterns,functions and distribution of micro shell nouns(SN).The corpus is selected from 120 SCI electric power engineering s written by Chinese and American authors from 2015 to 2019.The research adopts manual annotation and software statistics,focusing on quantitative analysis.The study aims to explore the similarities and differences between Chinese and American authors' writing cognition.Both similarities and differences coexist.The common features are:(1)The narrativity is low;Move 3(Describing the methodology)is the longest while Move 5(Discussing the research)is the shortest;four and three move structures are popular;Step 1(Stating current knowledge)and Step 4(Stating a problem)are the two most commonly used steps in Move 1.(2)The top three SN patterns are "N+Clause","N+Of" and "Clause+N";six uses are all covered with similar proportions;the three basic functions,characterization,concept-formation and cohesion are performed;as to the stance-taking affordances,entity SN ranks the first.The differences include:(1)Chinese authors' research abstracts corpus(CRAC)has simpler grammar while American authors' research abstracts corpus(ARAC)has deeper cohesion;Move 4(Summarizing the results)is also an obligatory move in CRAC;Chinese authors tend to draw conclusions while American authors stress contributions in Move 5;the move completeness of CRAC is better than that of ARAC.(2)The distribution of SN patterns is more uniform in ARAC,while more concentrated in CRAC;the form of"N+Clause" has a higher proportion in ARAC,while "N+Of" pattern is more favored by Chinese authors;the frequency of SN is the largest in Move 2 of ARAC but in Move 3 of CRAC;American authors use more attribute SN,while Chinese authors use more relation SN.The gap between the two groups is not significant as shown.Chinese authors should see and confirm this progress with confidence in English writing.This paper is conducive to constructing the models of Chinese scholars' English scientific abstracts and helping cultivate students' awareness of using shell nouns rationally in abstract writing.