Differences in engagement: A comparison of the strategies used by British and Chinese research article writers

Xiaoyu Xu; Hilary Nesi

doi:10.1016/j.jeap.2019.02.003

Differences in engagement: A comparison of the strategies used by British and Chinese research article writers

Xiaoyu Xu, Hilary Nesi

College of Arts & Society

City University of Hong Kong

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

37 Citations (Scopus)

433 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

This paper explores the way academics from two different cultural backgrounds engage with their discourse community in published international research articles. The Introduction and Conclusion sections of 30 research articles in the field of applied linguistics were analysed in terms of the Engagement system within Appraisal Theory (Martin & White, 2005), using the UAM Corpus Tool (O’Donnell, 2011). Half of these articles were written by authors who had been educated and were working in the UK, while the other half were by Chinese authors who had been educated and were working in Mainland China or Taiwan. Engagement items in the articles were examined individually (e.g., may) and in combination (e.g., although + may + not). Although the authors shared comparable disciplinary expertise, and all the articles were taken as expert performances, the analyses revealed that the Chinese and British academics used somewhat different engagement strategies, to differing extents, and that the different combinations of engagement items that they used resulted in different interactive effects. The findings are of potential interest to novice research writers and those who support them, and to journal editors and reviewers considering article submissions from around the world.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	121-134
Number of pages	14
Journal	Journal of English for Academic Purposes
Volume	38
Early online date	11 Feb 2019
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2019.02.003
Publication status	Published - Mar 2019

Bibliographical note

NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Journal of English for Academic Purposes. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Journal of English for Academic Purposes, [38], (2019)] DOI: 10.1016/j.jeap.2019.02.003

© 2019, Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Keywords

Academic discourse
Argument
Chinese writers
Cultural differences
Engagement

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Education
Language and Linguistics
Linguistics and Language

Access to Document

10.1016/j.jeap.2019.02.003

Post-PrintAccepted author manuscript, 1.17 MBLicence: CC BY-NC-ND

Cite this

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title = "Differences in engagement: A comparison of the strategies used by British and Chinese research article writers",

abstract = "This paper explores the way academics from two different cultural backgrounds engage with their discourse community in published international research articles. The Introduction and Conclusion sections of 30 research articles in the field of applied linguistics were analysed in terms of the Engagement system within Appraisal Theory (Martin & White, 2005), using the UAM Corpus Tool (O{\textquoteright}Donnell, 2011). Half of these articles were written by authors who had been educated and were working in the UK, while the other half were by Chinese authors who had been educated and were working in Mainland China or Taiwan. Engagement items in the articles were examined individually (e.g., may) and in combination (e.g., although + may + not). Although the authors shared comparable disciplinary expertise, and all the articles were taken as expert performances, the analyses revealed that the Chinese and British academics used somewhat different engagement strategies, to differing extents, and that the different combinations of engagement items that they used resulted in different interactive effects. The findings are of potential interest to novice research writers and those who support them, and to journal editors and reviewers considering article submissions from around the world.",

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Differences in engagement: A comparison of the strategies used by British and Chinese research article writers

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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Hilary Nesi

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Differences in engagement: A comparison of the strategies used by British and Chinese research article writers

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Access to Document

Other files and links

Fingerprint

Profiles

Hilary Nesi

Cite this