|
Abstract Abstract: As an important device for academic writers to express attitudes, evaluative it patterns have increasingly been a topic of massive interests in applied linguistics. This study compares the characteristic evaluative it patterns and meanings in research articles by Chinese scholars and Western scholars based on data drawn from a large-scale comparable corpus of academic English. The findings show that four characteristic it patterns are commonly used by the two groups of scholars. The patterns of it v-link ADJ to and it v-link ADJ that are the most frequent patterns in the two sets of texts, followed by the patterns of it v-link ADJ for n to and it v-link ADJ wh-. However, except for it v-link ADJ for n to, the other three patterns occur significantly less frequently in Chinese scholars’ texts than in Western scholars’ texts. The patterns are found to convey similar characteristic meanings; yet, significant differences are also observed in the semantic preferences of the patterns. Chinese scholars make greater use of the patterns to assess the difficulty and certainty of propositions or events whereas Western scholars use them more often to indicate importance and likelihood. The differences are discussed with reference to epistemology, L2 knowledge, pragmatic competence and suggestions for L2 EAP writing and academic discourse analysis.
Key words: evaluative it patterns; characteristic meanings; L2 writers; L2 knowledge; comparable corpora
|
|
|
|
|
|
