中美博士学位论文认知立场副词对比研究

A Contrastive Study of Epistemic Stance Adverbs in Chinese and American PhD Dissertations

立场副词是作者用以表达立场的重要语言手段,可以体现作者对命题内容或陈述方式的态度或判断。基于自建语料库,本研究考察了中美应用语言学领域博士学位论文结论部分中认知立场副词的使用情况。研究表明,两者在使用认知立场副词的种类比较接近,在词汇使用的丰富程度上也相差不大,高频认知立场副词均偏好句中位置。进一步分析发现,中国博士论文中可能性副词和确定性副词的使用频数明显偏少,不确定程度副词和言据性副词的使用频数明显偏多;在单个副词的选择上,中国博士论文中存在多用或少用某些词项的现象。总体来说,中国博士论文中认知立场副词的搭配序列相对较少,某些搭配也有所缺失。希望本研究能对国内学术英语教学与写作提供一定的启示作用。

Stance adverb is an important linguistic device used by writers to express their stance,which can reflect the writer’s attitude or judgment on the content of the proposition or the way of presentation.Based on self-built corpora,this study examines the use of epistemic stance adverbs in the concluding sections of Chinese and American PhD dissertations from the discipline of applied linguistics.It is found that Chinese and American scholars roughly use the same varieties of epistemic stance adverbs,and both prefer the clause-medial position when using those epistemic stance adverbs that occur frequently.Further analysis shows that Chinese scholars obviously use less probability adverbs and certainty adverbs,yet obviously use more adverbs of indefinite degree and evidentiality adverbs;moreover,Chinese scholars overuse or underuse some specific stance adverbs;generally speaking,Chinese scholars use less collocational sequences of epistemic stance adverbs,and there are some collocational sequences that are missing in Chinese PhD dissertations.It is hoped that this study may offer some insights into the academic English teaching and writing in China.