A Corpus-based Study Of Disjuncts In Argumentative Writings By Chinese English Majors

In everyday verbal communication,speakers are able to express not only the content of propositions objectively,but also their emotions and attitudes,and even their stance and opinions subjectively.There are various means of expressing a speaker’s stance and opinion,and disjunct is one of them.As an important grammatical structure,disjunct is a kind of adverbials with an evaluative meaning.It conveys information about what the speaker wants others to know,and also expresses the speaker’s own emotions,attitudes,evaluations and stance.Disjuncts are used in a wide range of contexts,including news reports,academic discourse,oral communication,and written expressions,serving as an important means of oral or written communication between speaker and listener.Based on Quirk’s et al.(1985)classification of disjuncts and the attitude and engagement sub-systems of Appraisal Theory,this study adopts a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods to analyze and discuss the disjuncts used in Chinese English learners’ argumentative writings.The research questions are as follows:(1)What are the frequency and distribution of disjuncts in Chinese English majors’ argumentative writings?(2)What are the differences of frequency and distribution of disjuncts used in Chinese English majors’ argumentative writings from different grades?(3)How are the evaluative functions of disjuncts in Chinese English majors’ argumentative writings embodied in terms of the attitude and engagement sub-systems?The data in this study is mainly from the written corpus of Chinese Learners WECCL.Then the data are divided into two corpora according to different grade levels,and the frequency and distribution characteristics of the disjuncts appearing in the two corpora are analyzed and compared by using corpus-retrieving software Ant Conc and statistical analysis software SPSS.Also,the evaluative functions of disjuncts embodied in their use are explored according to Appraisal Theory.The results show that:(1)In the argumentative writings of freshmen,style disjuncts occur more frequently than content disjuncts,and among the four subcategories,content disjuncts indicating “degree of or conditions for truth of content” have the highest proportion,followed by style disjuncts indicating “modality and manner”.In terms of position distribution,freshmen prefer to place the style disjuncts at the beginning of the sentence and the content disjuncts in the middle of the sentence.In juniors’ writings,style disjuncts appear more often than content disjuncts,and the most frequently used ones are style disjuncts indicating “modality and manner”,mostly at the beginning of sentences,followed by content disjuncts indicating “degree of or conditions for truth of content”,mostly in the medial position in sentences.(2)In terms of frequency,freshmen and juniors use similar number of style disjuncts,but freshmen use significantly more content disjuncts than juniors do.Specifically,the freshmen use more “respect” style disjuncts and “degree of or conditions for truth of content” content disjuncts,and slightly fewer “modality and manner” style disjuncts and “value judge of content” content disjuncts than juniors do.And the vocabulary richness of juniors is significantly higher than that of freshmen.In terms of distribution,freshmen tend to use disjuncts in initial position of sentences,while juniors tend to use them in the middle.Specifically,“modality and manner”style disjuncts are more frequently used at the beginning in both grades;“respect”style disjuncts used by freshmen at the beginning of sentences are remarkably more than those used by juniors;as for “degree of or conditions for truth of content”,freshmen use them more frequently in the initial position and fewer in the middle than juniors;there is no significant difference in the position of “value judge of content”disjuncts that are used in the middle of sentences more than at the beginning.(3)Among the disjuncts used by Chinese English learners,the content disjuncts expressing “conviction” and the style disjuncts reflecting “conclusion” achieve the evaluative meaning and function through the attitude subsystem of the Appraisal Theory;the content disjuncts expressing “possibility” and style disjuncts expressing“respect” have the dialogistic expansion function,accepting different opinions.The disjuncts expressing “speculation” or “definiteness” can embody their evaluative functions via the “pronounce” of dialogistic contraction.This study has the following significance: theoretically,it is a corpus-based study of the characteristics and evaluative functions of disjuncts in argumentative writings,which not only enriches the research about corpus,but also provides a new perspective for the studies of disjuncts.In terms of practice,the study helps teachers and students to deepen their understanding of the characteristics and evaluative functions of disjuncts,and thus provides suggestions for the use of disjuncts in their writings.