Genre Analysis of English Abstracts in Medical Research Articles Written by Native Speakers and Chinese Scholars—A Corpus-based Study

摘要

Background /Statement of the problem. Today there is mounting evidence that success of technical communication largely depends on both linguistic competence and knowledge of the appropriate structure of genres and the forms of their linguistic representation. This is particularly true when non-native speakers of English want to publish their research results in English. Purpose/Objective. The purpose of this study was to answer the following two questions:⑴Do medical English abstracts by Chinese non-native speakers follow the guidelines for manuscripts in the International Organization for Standardization?⑵Are there any cultural and cross-linguistic similarities/differences in written academic discourse(both English and Chinese)in the fields of medicine? Corpus and Methodology.To meet this end,a corpus of 100 English abstracts in seven Chinese leading medical journals and also another corpus of 100 abstracts in five American and British leading medical journals were established respectively.A combined approach to both genre and corpus analysis supplemented by a computer program-Wordsmith Tools were adopted to investigate.(1)the representation/arrangement of

目录

英文文摘

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Abbreviations

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Theoretical Background

2.1 Genre Analysis

2.2 Genre and sub-genre

2.3 Discourse community

2.4 Language learning tasks

2.5 Schemata-theory

2.5 Relationship of discourse community, genre, schemata and tasks

2.6 Move analysis

2.7 Methods of genre analysis

2.8 Cross-cultural factors in genre analysis

2.9. Collocational frameworks in genre

2.10 Corpus-based analysis of collocation

Chapter 3 Previous Studies on Medical Research Articles and Abstract Writing

3.1The research article as a written genre in medical research

3.2 The structure and communicative functions of abstracts

3.3 Prescriptive guidelines on abstract and abstract writing

3.4 Linguistic investigations into abstracts

3.4.1 Analysis of abstracts in the field of applied linguistics by Santos

3.4.2. Analysis of abstracts in medical journals by Meyer

3.4.2 Analysis of abstracts in scientific and technical articles by Keogh

3.4.3 Comparison of the three studies

Chapter 4 A Comparative Study of Abstracts in Medical Research Articles

4.1 Introduction

4.2 Purpose of the study

4.3 Corpus and methodology

4.4 Results--Moves and their linguistic realization in medical abstracts

4.4.1 Move 1--situating the research

4.4.2.Move 2—indicating the purpose

4.4.3.Move 3--describing the methodology (or procedure)

4.4.4. Move four-summarizing the results (or findings)

4.5.5 Move 5-Discussing the results

Chapter 5 Conclusions and Suggestions for Further Research

5.1 A summary of the findings

5.2 Implications for Pedagogy

5.3 Implications for Research

Appendix 1: Titles in NS Corpus

Appendix 2: Titles in NNS Corpus

Appendix 3: Results obtained by using Wordsmith Tools

3-A. Overall Comparison of Word Frequency List In NS Corpus and NNS Corpus (Top 30)

3-B. Word Frequency List in the Move Background in NS Corpus (Top 60)

3-C. Comparison of Word Frequency List in Move Objective/Purpose In NS Corpus and NNS Corpus (Top 30)

3-D. Comparison of Word Frequency List in the Move Method In NS Corpus and NNS Corpus (Top 30)

3-E. Comparison of Word Frequency List in the Move Result In NS Corpus and NNS Corpus (Top 30)

3-F. Comparison of Word Frequency List in the Move Conclusion In NS Corpus and NNS Corpus (Top 30)

Appendix 4 Example of Analysis of Abstract

Bibliography