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Multidimensional analysis of Master thesis abstracts: a diachronic perspective

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  • Shaoliang Xie

    (Tsinghua University)

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the diachronic change of Master thesis abstracts written by Chinese students in the applied linguistics. A corpus of 1000 English abstracts was built with 100 abstracts per each year during a 10-year period from 2009 to 2018. Based on the multidimensional analysis, both the textual and linguistic changes were investigated. To be specific, the Biber’s (Variation across speech and writing, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988) six-dimension model was adopted to capture the dimensional and linguistic styles of abstracts in each year. Multidimensional analysis tagger (Nini in Multidimensional analysis tagger (version 1.3), 2015. http://sites.google.com/site/multidimensionaltagger) was used to automatically extract the data including the z-scores of dimensions and linguistic features. Further analysis focusing on the linguistic features of each dimension was performed by using stepwise regression analysis. The results showed that there was a pattern of a 3-year cycle of abstract style and the textual feature of Dimension 1 and linguistic features of Dimension 1, 3 and 5 had significant differences during these years. Two reasons, internal and external, were suggested to interpret the diachronic evolution of English abstracts by Chinese students.

Suggested Citation

  • Shaoliang Xie, 2020. "Multidimensional analysis of Master thesis abstracts: a diachronic perspective," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(2), pages 861-881, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:123:y:2020:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-020-03408-6
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-020-03408-6
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Seden Can & Erkan Karabacak & Jingjing Qin, 2016. "Structure of Moves in Research Article Abstracts in Applied Linguistics," Publications, MDPI, vol. 4(3), pages 1-16, July.
    2. Pat Strauss, 2019. "Shakespeare and the English Poets: The Influence of Native Speaking English Reviewers on the Acceptance of Journal Articles," Publications, MDPI, vol. 7(1), pages 1-10, March.
    3. Naser Rashidi & Hussein Meihami, 2018. "Informetrics of Scientometrics abstracts: a rhetorical move analysis of the research abstracts published in Scientometrics journal," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(3), pages 1975-1994, September.
    4. Editorial Article, 0. "Abstracts," Economics of Contemporary Russia, Regional Public Organization for Assistance to the Development of Institutions of the Department of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, issue 3.
    5. Rahman Sahragard & Hussein Meihami, 2016. "A diachronic study on the information provided by the research titles of applied linguistics journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 108(3), pages 1315-1331, September.
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    Cited by:

    1. Evelyn Eika, 2021. "Is Peer Feedback Helpful When Learning Literature Review Writing? A Study of Feedback Features and Quantity," English Linguistics Research, Sciedu Press, vol. 10(1), pages 10-28, March.

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