Master of Arts

Over the past two decades, L1 and L2 students’ plagiarism has become a growing concern in the academia and thus been investigated through various perspectives (e.g., cultural, developmental, disciplinary, and contextual, etc.). Among them, much discussion has primed to Chinese and L1 students’ perceived knowledge, attitude and causes of plagiarism from researchers’ perspective such that few studies have actually explored its characteristics in authentic academic writing from students’ own perspective.

Nevertheless, both our deepening understanding and emerging empirical evidence have pinpointed that students’ self-report on their plagiarism, although important, was not necessarily related to their ability to actually recognize and avoid plagiarism. Thus, to better deal with Chinese and L1 students’ plagiarism pedagogically, more text-based studies about the nature and causes of plagiarism that are rooted from students’ perspective are needed.

In addition, other gaps still existed in our understanding of Chinese and L1 students’ plagiarism. Particularly, controversial views on Chinese culture’s acceptability of plagiarism, scant evidence for developmental effects of plagiarism above undergraduate level in Chinese EFL context, inconclusive results about the existence of disciplinary difference on plagiarism construction, and a paucity of research into mainland Chinese postgraduates’ perceived causes for plagiarism.

In an attempt to fill up these gaps, this study adopts a cross-cultural comparison orientation and an integrative perspective in exploring the nature, frequencies and causes of textual plagiarism between Western and Chinese MA dissertations in applied linguistics.

To achieve its objective, this study employs a mixed-methods (combining textual analysis with semi-structured and discourse-based email interview) to collect data from 16 MA dissertations from two universities and some of MA supervisor-supervisee pairs involved. The collected textual data were analyzed to look at the nature and frequencies and reasons for textual plagiarism among dissertations from two cultures. The interview responses with some of supervisor-supervisee pairs were analyzed to explore their justification, perceived causes for, and reported attitudes towards plagiarism.

First, an intradisciplinary gap on transparent source use was confirmed between Chinese and Western MA dissertations corpora in applied linguistics. Specifically, my results indicated that 15 out of 16 samples from both Chinese and Western corpora were not transparent in their source use. Overall, Chinese corpus tended to be substantially less transparent in accounting for their source influence than Western corpus. These findings corroborate with previous literature indicating that Chinese EFL learners were more likely to fail to transparently account for their source use than that of their Western counterpart (Moore, 1997; Shi, 2004). The observed intradisciplinary gap may arguably have to do with the differences pertaining L1 vs. EFL social and educational contexts, difference in Chinese/Western universities’ education effectiveness and the mitigating effects of local standards on plagiarism management.

Second, the results verified that MA dissertations from both Chinese and Western cultural backgrounds contained textual plagiarism of varying degrees. Such verification lends support to Howard, Serviss., and Rodrigu’s (2010) conclusion that textual plagiarism was widely observed among both L1 and L2 students. It further rejects the claim that Chinese students’ plagiarism is culturally conditioned (Pennycook, 1996; Sowden, 2005). It is argued that Chinese supervisor-supervisees’ and Western supervisors’ seeming acceptability of textual plagiarism may be a result of their different understandings of plagiarism, their limited knowledge of Western notion of plagiarism or the mitigating effects of local universities’ standards on plagiarism identification and management.

Third, regarding the nature and frequency of textual plagiarism, the result revealed textual plagiarism was more severely and unequivocally practiced by postgraduates in Chinese corpus than in Western corpus. Such finding concurs with Shi’s (2004) and Li’s (2012) conclusion that source-acknowledging practice is more inadequate among students in China than in Western context. Such result also adds on previous literature suggesting that textual plagiarism was widely practiced by both L1 and L2 students, nevertheless, L2 (Chinese in particular) students were more severe in such performance (Campbell, 1990; Hull & Rose, 1989; Keck, 2006; Pecorari, 2003; Shi, 2004). The possible reasons for such marked difference may be, as previous literature (Ange′lil-Carter, 2000; Baurain, 2011; Gu & Brooks, 2008; Pecorari, 2003; Shi, 2004, 2006) suggests, due to the differences in plagiarism-related variables between Chinese and Western contexts (e.g., differed perception, standards of and levels of involvement in plagiarism; language proficiency; infrastructure constraint).

Fourth, concerning postgraduates’ perceived causes for their source misuse, Chinese supervisor-supervisee pairs’ self-reports, aside from verifying patchwriting model and partially supporting cross-cultural variance in the perception of plagiarism (see also in Howard et al., 2010; Hu & Lei, 2011; Liu, 2005; Pecorari, 2003, 2008; Shi, 2004, 2006), also converged on other five explanations. They were, students’ limited knowledge and understanding of Western citing convention, university’s/ academics’/students’ low psychological engagement with academic guidelines, lack of access to sources, lack of systematic instruction, and students’ poor source-searching, selecting and documenting skills. Surprisingly, the widely suggested language proficiency was not perceived as a cause in this study. This finding highlights the mitigating effects that cross-culturally variant perception of plagiarism, local university’s regulating culture/infrastructure/ pedagogical support on plagiarism have exerted in the occurrence of textual plagiarism.

Fifth, regarding disciplinary supervisor’s reaction to supervisees’ source misuses, my results indicated that Chinese supervisors generally held rejecting and condemnatory attitudes towards intentional plagiarism. Such finding, similar with Hu and Lei’s (2011), and Li’s (2012) observations, introduces further counterevidence towards the claim of Chinese culture’s acceptability of plagiarism. Second, Chinese supervisors, similar with Dong’s (1996) and Li’s (2012) reports, despite expressing disapproval of their supervisees’ identified source misuses, reported not to see any intentional plagiarism from supervisees and refused to make plagiarism judgment. This result corroborates with Pecorari’s (2003, 2008) observations that Western supervisors were also hesitant to make plagiarism-related judgment about their L2 supervisees’ source misuse. Chinese supervisors’ reaction to and their justification for supervisees’ source misuses further support the existence of unintentional plagiarism among Chinese postgraduates.

In sum, this study showed that an intradisciplinary gap in effective source-use did exist among mainland Chinese and Western-educated postgraduates. Such gap may be attributable to the difference among multiple variables between the two groups of students pertaining plagiarism such as cultural, developmental, contextual factors (e.g., institutional infrastructure, overall regulating culture regarding plagiarism). It is suggested that in the future discussion of student plagiarism, an integrated perspective is essential if we want to better understand and cope with it.

With the wide spreading of marketization in our contemporary society, advertising and promotion have been found to have penetrated many spheres of our lives. Recent research has begun to observe their manifestation in academic discourse and even in scientific research articles (RAs). It is true that academics need to promote their research for the sake of knowledge construction, name recognition and professional development. But unlike overtly promotional genres such as advertisements and sales promotion letters, RAs are publicly accepted as objective reports of research. So, the question of how academic writers manage their private promotional intention in scientific research reporting becomes the focus of current study.

To allow for a focused and in-depth elaboration of the rhetorical and linguistic realization of promotion in RAs, just one promotional strategy and its use in one section of RAs in one discipline have been chosen for investigation in this study. Specifically, this study focuses on how Applied Linguists indirectly promote their research in research article introductions (RAIs) by highlighting the significance of their research topics. With a corpus of 51 RAIs selected from three internationally published journals in Applied Linguistics, this study unveils to readers: (1) the types of appeals made by Applied Linguists to promote topic significance in their RAIs; (2) the repertoire of linguistic resources employed by Applied Linguists to realize each type of appeals in their RAIs; and (3) Applied Linguists’ preferred patterns in deploying the types of appeals in their RAIs.

To investigate the types of appeals with which Applied Linguists promote the significance of their topics, an analysis was carried out on the text segments of RAIs introducing topics. The qualitative description reveals that Applied Linguists mainly promote their topic significance by employing four types of appeals, that is, salience, magnitude, topicality and problematicity. The linguistic devices overtly or covertly realizing these appeals are also illustrated in this part with the tool of appraisal.

To explore Applied Linguists’ preferred ways in using these types of appeals for promotional purposes, a coding scheme was further set up according to the four types of appeals identified in the qualitative analysis. With the coding scheme, all instances of appeals in the 51 RAIs were further coded to find out the general patterns of distribution of these appeals. The results show that Applied Linguists prefer to promote their topic significance indirectly by appealing to the topicality, magnitude, or problematicity of their topics rather than directly appeal to the salience of them. Moreover, Applied Linguists tend to accentuate the topicality, magnitude, or problematicity of their topics by referring to entities in the research world, but highlight the salience of their topics by referring to entities in the real world. In addition, they prefer to market topic significance at the outset of RAIs, although this kind of marketing is seen across RAIs.

Through the systematic analysis of the realization of promotion from the grammatical level of linguistic resources to the discourse level of rhetoric purposes, the current study unfolds to readers the strategic realization of the hidden agenda of promotion in RAs. It contributes to the demystification of academic discourse to novice and/or L2 writers and has important theoretical and pedagogical implications.