A Contrastive Study On English Academic Papers Between Chinese And American Scholars Under The Theory Of High And Low Context

The process of globalization has promoted the increasingly frequent exchanges between different cultures in different backgrounds.Context and culture are very important in different cultural communication.Context theory,which came into being in the 1960 s,is one of the important theories in the field of cross-cultural communication.According to the different degree of dependence of culture on the environment,Hall(1976: 79)put forward the concept of high and low context for the first time in his book Beyond Culture.In the book,he pointed out that the communication of high-context is that “most of the information is either stored in the tangible context or internalized in the individual,and rarely exists in the encoded and clearly transmitted message”.On the other hand,the communication of low-context is just the opposite,which means that “a lot of information is contained in clear coding”(ibid,70).According to Hall’s research,Gudykunst regarded China as a typical high-context country and the United States as a low-context country in 1985.The theory of high and low context plays an important role in removing communication barriers between different cultures and improving intercultural communication competence.In recent years,the process of internationalization has gradually broken through the restrictions between different regions,and high and low context cultures are constantly communicating and merging.But is this blending reflected in the field of academic writing? What are the cultural contextual characteristics of English academic discourses written by scholars of different cultural backgrounds? It’s worth studying these issues,but high and low context theory is rarely used for corresponding research in the field of academic writing at home and abroad.This research is based on Hall’s high and low cultural context as the theoretical basis.After screening,this thesis takes 30 academic articles written by Chinese authors in Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics and 30 academic articles written by American native language authors in Language Teaching Research.And two journals mainly focused on teaching in the field of applied linguistics.Through the establishment of a small corpus,the following three questions are researched:(1)What are the contextual and cultural characteristics of Chinese and American scholars in expressing stance and attitude in English academic papers?(2)What are the contextual and cultural features of Chinese and American scholars in speculating on the results of the discussion in English academic papers?(3)What are the similarities and differences between Chinese and American English academic papers from Hall’s high and low context theory?The research adopts quantitative and qualitative research methods,and the conclusions are as follows.First of all,in terms of attitudinal stance,Chinese and American scholars exhibit consistency in the performance of stance expression,using positive words first,followed by neutral words and finallycritical words,all of which show the high-context cultural characteristics of harmonious interpersonal relations.Although Chinese scholars are slightly inferior to American native scholars in the frequency of attitudinal stance verbs,there is no significant difference.Moreover,American scholars have also demonstrated the low-contextual nature of critical interpersonal relationships and critical evaluations of previous studies.Secondly,the most commonly used speculative expression in academic papers is modal verbs.It can be found that both Chinese and American scholars tend to adopt rigorous pragmatic strategies.They’re inclined to use more low-value modal verbs to illustrate low commitment and have low context cultural characteristics with stronger negotiation with readers.Moreover,American scholars can flexibly use modal verbs of different values to express academic ideas.They can appropriately present the degree of firmness to the conjecture results,and at the same time it’s necessary to deliver the intersection of high and low context cultures.However,a small number of Chinese scholars manifest the shift from high-context culture to low-context culture because of their limited language ability.As can be seen from the above,under the influence of the stipulation of academic language and social customs,high and low context cultures show the characteristics of two-way transfer in Sino-American academic writing.High-context culture and low-context culture in English academic papers are not two irreconcilable opposites,but they permeate the cultures of both sides in varying degrees。Through the comparative analysis between China and the United States,this study has some implications for the teaching of academic writing in China.First,we should strengthen the author’s consciousness and cultivate students’ critical thinking ability.Then we guide students to have a clear sense of attitudinal stance in teaching and truly express their stance to construct their own academic views in writing.Second,we should attach importance to the common features of the same type of discourse and explore the regularity of language forms in different contexts and cultures.What’s more,we also need to enhance students’ sensitivity to language and choose appropriate words to express their academic thoughts.Finally,we should cultivate students’ awareness of two-way transfer between high and low context so as to fundamentally improve their language ability and writing ability.