Abstract：Abstract: Academic criticism is one of the defining features of academic research and academic writing. It is also a necessary path towards academic innovation. Existing rich literature on academic criticism mainly focuses on its definition, functions, methods, variations, changes and the like, seldom touching its various aspects in the course of analysis, let alone attempting to construct an analytical framework for doing academic criticism on the basis of research article (RA) database. This paper thus fills in the gap by drawing on genre analysis, appraisal theory and pragmatic theories, and working on sizable RA data from international journals. The constructed framework includes targets, dimensions, attitudes, strategies and intensities of criticism, each of which falls into sub-categories.
Key words: academic writing; academic criticism; evaluation; analytical framework
