| Nominal stance constructions could not only help writers with information delivery and sentiments expression in academic discourse,but also assist readers in the interaction with writers as well as the acceptance of authorial viewpoints imperceptibly.However,in recent years,there are a few studies in survey of nominal stance constructions in academic writings,especially in English abstracts,which are not only the miniature of academic articles,but also the readers’ first encounter with the writers,influencing readers’ interest for further reading.Therefore,compared with other frequently explored stance devices such as stance adjectives,and stance adverbs,the present study investigates how nominal stance constructions are utilized in academic abstracts.The general research orientation of this thesis can be divided into three research questions:(1)What are the overall frequencies of nominal stance constructions and the respective frequency of each nominal stance category in English abstracts of Business English(BE)master’s theses and English Language and Literature(ELL)master’s theses?(2)What are the similarities and differences in terms of nominal stance constructions in English abstracts of BE master’s theses and ELL master’s theses?(3)What factors may act as triggers for the observed similarities and differences,if any?In order to address the above research questions,the corpora of English abstracts collected from master’s theses of BE and ELL are built and Jiang’s functional classification of stance nouns(2015)are adopted.The analytical tools include Tree Tagger,Ant Conc and SPSS 25.The similarities and differences of nominal stance constructions in the two corpora could be identified by virtue of the Log Likelihood calculation.The results show that:(1)The overall frequencies of nominal stance constructions in English abstracts of BE master’s theses and ELL master’s theses are relatively similar,within which entity stance nouns account for the largest proportion,followed by attribute stance nouns and relations.The N +of-prepositional clauses are the most frequently used complement structures headed by stance nouns,and pre-modifications all pertain to attitudinal evaluation.Thesis,identity,perspective,image are among the top ten most frequent stance nouns in both corpora.(2)Similarities appear in the usage of cognition stance nouns,discourse,manner,status and relation as well as the N + to-infinitive clauses,the N+ wh-clauses,and pre-modifications,while differences are discovered in terms of the application of event stance nouns,quality stance nouns and their complement structures.(3)The identical genre and discipline result in the observed similarities,whereas different majors account for the possible differences.This study provides new perspectives for the explanation of similarities and differences of nominal stance constructions,and likewise,expands the relevant studies in soft disciplines.These findings can also help graduates of BE craft their master’s theses in the matter of providing stance resources and devices and raising their awareness of target readers. |
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