A Corpus-Based Study of Evaluative That-Clause in Abstracts of Chinese Learners' Doctoral Dissertations

S AS A GENRE IN ACADEMIC WRITING Academic writing is always considered to be purely objective, impersonal and informational, designed to disguise the author and deal directly with facts. This objectivity in academic writing, however, has been challenged by researchers (Biber, 2006; Charles, 2006; Hunston, 1994, 2004; Hyland, 2000 & 2002; Hyland and Tse, 2004), because academic writing is obviously persuasive in presenting its propositional information. The arguments in academic discourse are rarely made without interpretive statements and assessments of their likely probability. These assessments necessarily involve personal or subjective judgments in order to make the discourse persuasive, which is typically proved in research abstracts. Research article abstracts have thus become an increasingly important genre (Golebiowski, 2009; Huckin, 2006; Lorés, 2004; Samraj, 2002 & 2005; Stotesbury, 2003; Van Bonn & Swales, 2007), because they serve as a summary of a study’s research questions, methodology, and findings, to attract readers to continue reading by serving as screening devices and aids to indexing by professional indexers for large database services. Abstracts have become a tool of mastering and managing the ever increasing information flow in the scientific community, and members of the research community have 10 more pages are available in the full version of this document, which may be purchased using the "Add to Cart" button on the product's webpage: www.igi-global.com/article/a-corpus-based-study-ofevaluative-that-clause-in-abstracts-of-chinese-learnersdoctoral-dissertations/117195?camid=4v1 This title is available in InfoSci-Journals, InfoSci-Journal Disciplines Library Science, Information Studies, and Education. Recommend this product to your librarian: www.igi-global.com/e-resources/libraryrecommendation/?id=2