A Comparative Analysis On Citations In Literature Review Of Linguistics MA Theses By Chinese And English Native Speakers

This study is conducted based on two self-built corpora,Literature Review in English linguistics MA theses by Chinese Masters(LRCNS)and Literature Review in English linguistics MA theses by Native Speakers(LRENS).It aims to investigate into the use of citations between these two corpora under the guidance of Xu Fang(2012)’s classification of citation and Coffin(2009)’s classification of writer stance.The differences and similarities between the use of citation in the above two corpora are studied in terms of citation forms,citation strategies,citation content and writer stance.Through research and analysis,this research aims to help improve the literature review writing expertise of Chinese native speakers and provide some references for teaching of academic writing.Findings of this research are as follows.In terms of citation forms,English native speakers tend to use non-integral forms whereas Chinese native speakers prefer to use verb-controlling integral forms.In terms of citation content,the former mainly cite “opinion explanation” and the latter tend to cite “scheme/topic” the most.Concerning the choice of citation strategies,writers in LRENS prefer to use “generalization & summarization” whereas writers in LRCNS like to employ “adoption & application”.In terms of constructing writer stance,they both use “acknowledge” the most and rarely use “contest”.Therefore,it is summarized that Chinese native speakers give deference to the authority of the cited author,use less diversified citation forms,and are lack of independent evaluations and in-depth research of cited material.Future teaching of academic writing can attach more importance to improving their ability to generalize and summarize literature and cite flexibly.