Promotional strategies in English and Chinese research article introduction and discussion/conclusion sections: A cross-cultural study

Abstract

This study explores promotional strategies in English and Chinese introductions and discussion/conclusion sections of applied linguistics (AL) research articles (RAs). Based on genre analysis, a more comprehensive and fine-grained taxonomy of promotional strategies was developed for the two RA part-genres that show a symmetrical relationship in terms of their promotional moves. A higher degree of promotion is detected in our corpus, which may be due to the increasing marketization of academia and the nature of AL. Regarding the cross-cultural variations, it is found that English texts are more promotional than Chinese ones. In the introduction, Chinese writers tend to rely heavily on the top three most frequent promotional strategies in our corpus, while English writers are inclined to justify and reinforce the significance of the research topic or claims, demonstrating a strong argumentation pattern. In the discussion/conclusion section, Chinese writers are more likely to summarize and explain their research results whereas English writers show a preference for evaluation of their research findings. Competitive research/publication contexts, national culture, audience, and disciplinary writing conventions might contribute to such differences. The findings and discussion through the lens of interdiscursivity and intercultural rhetoric have implications for EAL/ESL academic writing research and pedagogy.