A discourse analysis of PhD dissertations written in Chinese

Abstract

In view of the increasing importance of the Chinese language internationally now and in the future, research published in Chinese will be receiving more attention, and how to write about research in this language is worth studying, including the writing of PhD dissertations. The purpose of this paper is to report on the findings of an analysis of the discourse of 60 Chinese PhD dissertations. These dissertations are from a leading comprehensive university in China, covering six disciplines – applied linguistics, public administration, business studies, computer science, electronic engineering and biology. The analysis was conducted from three perspectives. Firstly, the structures of these dissertations were identified, being the traditional-complex type (Introduction-Literature Review-Methodology-Results/Findings-Discussion –Conclusions) or topic-based (Introduction-Theme/Topic 1-Theme/Topic 2-Theme/Topic 3-Conclusion) (Paltridge, 2003). Then the genetic moves in the Introduction chapter and the Conclusion chapter were analyzed using the genre approach (Swales, 1990). These moves include general background to the study, general review of the literature, and general introduction to the main study in the Introduction; summary of major findings, overall conclusions (and implications), and directions for future research in the Conclusion, albeit some are field-oriented while others are thesis-oriented. Finally linguistic devices employed by the authors to express stances were examined, including the use of hedges (eg. keneng [may], jianyi [suggest]), boosters (eg. xian’er yijian [obviously], shiji shang [in fact]), attitude markers (eg. ling ren chijing de shi [surprisingly], you yisi de shi [interestingly]), engagement markers (eg. zhuyi [note that], (duzhe/nin) keyi kanchu [you can see that]), and self-mentions (eg. wo [I] and wo’men [we]) (Hyland, 2004). These perspectives were then compared cross disciplines with a view to delineating the construction of disciplinary identities (Hyland, 2012). Being expandable to include a larger number of dissertations in more disciplines, this research will enrich the literature on academic writing in Chinese. It will also have useful implications for writing Chinese PhD dissertations as well as the teaching of it.