Abstract
In this study, we identify the systematic language varieties and discourse characteristics that are indicative of the academic writings of Chinese and American scientists. We conduct a Contrastive Corpus Analysis using the computational tool, the Gramulator, to identify indicative features in Chinese science journal abstracts as compared to American science abstracts. The results suggest that the Chinese scientists tend to employ different linguistic features from their American counterparts. Specifically, Chinese science abstracts can be characterized as non-standard varieties of English by the choice of the three items: the agent, the tense, and two major types of reporting verbs. We conclude that the results may account for the interpretation of Chinese academic writings of English as non-prototypical in terms of discourse style. This study sheds light on language varieties and methodology that may be helpful to English Language Learners as well as materials developers in countries such as China.
Highlights
The last three decades have seen a growing number of discourse studies on written academic genres, especially research articles produced by scientists (e.g., Hyland, 2000; Swales, 1990, 2004) and by graduate students (e.g., Bunton, 2002, 2005; Dong, 1998; Ridley, 2000; Swales,2004; Thompson, 1999, 2001, 2005)
The purpose of our study is to discover and assess language varieties used in science abstract writings of Chinese scientists as compared to American scientists
We assess whether Chinese scientists employ distinct language varieties in academic science abstracts writings in comparison to a prototypical model from American scientists
Summary
The last three decades have seen a growing number of discourse studies on written academic genres, especially research articles produced by scientists (e.g., Hyland, 2000; Swales, 1990, 2004) and by graduate students (e.g., Bunton, 2002, 2005; Dong, 1998; Ridley, 2000; Swales,2004; Thompson, 1999, 2001, 2005). For the level of scientific journal texts, as McCarthy and colleagues (2009) demonstrate, relatively little research has compared the texts of nonnative-English-speaking scientists (or Outsiders as they are referred to in Min & McCarthy) to those written by their native-English-speaking counterparts (or Insiders as they are referred to in Min & McCarthy) so as to identify linguistic varieties using computational tools This issue is of importance because the degree to which an English-language text differs from an expected model (e.g. American English) may negatively affect the chances of the non-native English speakers having their manuscripts accepted (Flowerdew, 2001; Hewings, 2006)
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