Abstract:Abstract: Based on a comparable-corpus of English research articles (RAs) by Chinese scholars (CSs) and western scholars (WSs) and a diachronic corpus of RAs by CSs, this paper analyzed the use and distribution of ten informality features in CSs’ RAs at two time periods and across writer groups in comparison to that in WSs’ RAs. The results show that: (i) the most frequent informality features used in both CSs’ and WSs’ RAs are first person pronouns, unattended anaphoric pronouns and sentence-initial conjunctions or conjunctive adverbs; (ii) while there is no significant difference in the use of informality features between CSs’ and WSs’ RAs in the hard sciences, CSs’ RAs in the soft sciences employ less informality features than WSs’; (iii) CSs’ use of informality features over the past 20 years increases greatly, hard sciences scholars’ use in particular. This suggests that CSs hold more liberal attitudes towards the use of informality features in RAs, though much more prudent than WSs.
Key words: informality features; research articles; Chinese scholars and western scholars; diachronic