A Contrastive Study Of Evidentiality In British And Chinese College Students’ English Debates

The English debate competition can not only exercise the logical ability and knowledge expansion ability of college students,but also show their oral expression ability.The quality of the Chinese students’ debate is low because of the lack of persuasive strength.The use of evidentials may affect the persuasiveness of college students’ arguments.By reviewing the previous researches,the author finds that the research on evidentiality is still in the initial stage,and there are few researches related to evidentiality in college English debate competition.Based on the current research status of evidentiality,this paper compares and analyzes the differences in the distribution frequency of evidentiality used by Chinese and English college students in debate competitions,as well as the differences in persuasiveness reflected by them.Finally,this paper explores the main causes behind these differences.In this study,based on Hu Zhuanglin’s revised framework of the argumentative theory of Chafe,the present author builds a small corpus,and selects the latest 5 debates from the “FLTRP· ETIC CUP” National English Debating Competition and British Oxford Union BP Debate Competition respectively as the corpus.The qualitative and quantitative research methods are combined to explore the similarities and differences of evidential use in the English debates of Chinese and English college students.With Ant Conc 4.0.11 and Chi-square test and Log-likelihood,this paper investigates the distribution of evidentials and its language realization,so as to answer the following questions:(1)What are the differences in the distribution of evidentials in Chinese and British college students’ debates?(2)How does the different use of evidentials affect the persuasive strength of the debates?(3)What are the main causes for the similarities and differences of persuasiveness?The main research findings of this paper are as follows:There are some similarities in the use of evidentials in the Chinese and British students’ debates.All of these similarities give the debate a positive effect,thus,the study mainly focuses on the differences.(1)All the seven categories of evidentiality are prevalent in the debates of Chinese and British college students.In general,Chinese college students use more evidentials.Specifically,they use more belief evidentials,verbal resource evidentials and expectation evidentials than British students.British college students,on the other hand,use more deduction and hearsay evidentials,and the forms of evidentials they use are more diversified and more reasonably distributed.Among them,the largest frequency difference is the use of deduction evidentials.In addition,British college students have more diversity in the realization and vocabulary choice of evidentiality in English debates.(2)There are obvious differences between Chinese and English college students in the use of seven evidentials,and these differences affect the persuasiveness of their debates.Chinese college students overuse highly subjective belief evidentials and eager to express their own views on others,which is reflected in the objectivity and adequacy of Chinese college students’ choice of information sources,thus damages the persuasive power of debates;British college students,on the other hand,use less belief evidentials,which makes the content of their debate more objective and rational.In terms of deduction evidentials,from the perspective of modality,the author also found that Chinese students used a large number of subjective modality,often referring to the first person as the subject,and use more present tenses of modality verbs,which gives a direct and stiff tone to their argumentation,thus is not conducive to the audience’s acceptance and recognition.British college students use more past tenses of modality verbs and often use non-human subjects,which makes tone of their debate indirect and polite,leaving some room for negotiation and thus making the persuasion more effective.In the aspect of induction evidentials,it’s a good performance that Chinese college students use more such evidentials to demonstrate.They try to conclude the argument in a logical way to convince the audience.In terms of hearsay evidentials,Chinese college students perform better.They consciously use data or authoritative arguments to testify their opinions,intending to convince the audience.In terms of reliability evidentials,Chinese college students use more vague words,which leads to unclear reference and poor objectivity of debate.In terms of verbal resource evidentials,Chinese college students use them more like pet phrases,although it makes their statements less clear,it also adds objectivity to the debate to a certain extent.And in terms of expectation evidentials,Chinese college students use more words to enhance the degree of emphasis,which makes the content of their debate more credible.(3)Based on the above findings,the author gives several main causes: Firstly,due to the low level of language ability,Chinese students’ argumentation lacks diversity in the use of evidentials,some evidentials(such as I think,so,actually,etc.)are only used as pet phrases,without the evidential function at all;Secondly,Chinese and Westerners have different ways of thinking.British college students are more direct in their expression,and they have stronger logical thinking,which makes the their arguments more convincing;Thirdly,Chinese college students’ debate is more euphemistic,but excessive euphemism may influence the persuasiveness of debate,while British college students’ expression is more direct;Fourth,due to the negative transfer of Chinese mother tongue,the English expressions of Chinese college students are Chinglish,and cannot properly express evidentiality;Finally,the lack of critical thinking and the insufficient knowledge storage also undermines the proper use of evidentials as well as the persuasiveness of the Chinese students’ debating.In general,in the corpus selected in this paper,although Chinese college students are excellent debaters selected layer by layer,it is normal for them to have some weakness in language compared with native English speakers.This thesis has theoretical significance and practical significance.Theoretically,it enriches the theory of evidentiality and its application in different genres,further proving that evidentiality is a universal linguistic phenomenon.In practice,this paper is hoped to help Chinese college students realize the gap between themselves and British college students in debate,make up for their weaknesses,so as to improve the persuasive power of debate.