Claim strength and argument structure in international research articles: A case study using Chinese, Ukranian, and United States chemistry texts.

摘要

Cross-cultural collaboration on research has fueled an interest in professional writing traditions in different cultures. One area of interest is whether claims and arguments are constructed differently in different cultural-linguistic traditions since those aspects of writing are most closely linked to good research practices. In this project, I examine the cross-cultural variation in claim and argument structure for chemistry research articles written by three cultural-linguistic groups: PRC-Chinese, Ukrainian-Russian, and the U.S.-English. This research relies on the theories and methodologies of discourse, genre, and text analysis. Since there is a paucity of comprehensive frameworks for describing clausal and text-level features and for relating those features to each other and to claims and arguments, three frameworks were developed. These new frameworks allow researchers to (1) extend the research on rhetorical moves to two higher levels of argument; (2) examine the attribution of claims and the relative strengths of claims independently and in relation to each other; (3) examine clausal-level features such as attribution, claim strength, phenomenal vs. epistemic sentence subjects, and agency as they relate to the overall argument structure. The frameworks were applied to normal or boilerplate chemistry research articles to (1) test whether the frameworks adequately describe chemistry texts and (2) document differences among the texts from the three groups. The analyses revealed cross-cultural differences in the ways arguments are constructed, in how claims are attributed, and in how claim strength, disciplinary focus, and agency are expressed. In addition, the analyses demonstrated that varying bundles of clausal-level features are used for different rhetorical purposes such as filling a gap, questioning the findings of previous researchers, or emphasizing a new method. The frameworks represent an important step forward in discourse and text analysis and should prove useful to other researchers interested in the claim and argument structure of texts in other fields. The findings of this contrastive study have immediate implications for (1) those who cross linguistic borders in their professional writing, (2) those who teach or mentor such professionals or novices, and (3) those who evaluate texts written by members of other cultural-linguistic groups.