應用語言學期刊論文中的引用分析：形式、言談功能和報導動詞

Abstract

在學術寫作中，引用(citation)扮演了一個非常重要的角色。在任何領域裡，透過引用前人的文獻，研究者可以充分的紀錄、累積以及提出相關的學術知識。儘管如此，回顧過去關於引用的相關文獻，我發現絕大多數都是集中在資訊科學領域學者之手，鮮少是從應用語言學的角度來探討引用；再者，前人的研究中，雖然有不少的學者致力於建構不同的分類去分析引用，但大多數的研究都僅僅著重在單一層面的引用分析，例如：分析引用的形式或是分析引用中的報導動詞，很少研究去探討引用形式以及功能之間的相互關係並進一步檢視引用在不同修辭情境(rhetorical contexts)中的使用情形。

有鑑於此，我同時分析學術期刊中引用的三種不同面向：形式(form)、言談功能(discourse function)以及報導動詞(reporting verb)，這三種不同層面的引用分析並依照期刊的四個章節進一步探究—序論(Introduction)、方法(Method)、結果(Results)以及討論(Discussion)，希望透過這樣的分析研究使相關讀者能夠對於引用有更為深入的了解。

在研究方法上，我以語料庫分析結合文類分析為研究方法。我建構了一個以三十六篇應用語言學期刊論文所組成的語料庫來進行引用分析，首先，關於引用的形式分析，我建立了一個三層的分析結構，在第一層的結構中，引用被分成兩大類：融入式和非融入式引用(integral and non-integral citations)；在第二層中，融入式引用再分成兩類：單句式以及延伸式引用(single-sentence and extended citations)；在第三層中，依據引用所出現的句法位置，單句式引用分成四類：主詞、被動句之施動者、含所有格之名詞片語以及其它(subject, passive agent, possessive noun phrase, or others)四種不同的位置。而在功能上，我建構了一個包含九種不同功能的分類來進行引用的功能分析。最後，關於引用中的報導動詞，依照Thompson和Yi (1991) 以及Thomas和Hawes (1994)所提出的分類，我把報導動詞分成三大類：研究類動詞、言談類動詞以及認知類動詞。

首先，在形式上的分析結果，整體而言，我發現在三層架構中非融入式引用、單句式引用以及位在主詞位置的單句式引用的使用比例分別遠遠超過各個相對應的種類。而在功能上的分析結果，我發現「提供(所引用的研究的)觀點以及研究發現」是最常使用的引用功能，除了該功能外，其他常使用的功能都確切地反應它們所處的言談情境，舉例來說，「提供比較」的引用功能在「結果」以及「討論」這兩個章節比在「序論」以及「方法」更為常見。最後，在報導動詞的分析上，我發現言談類動詞使用的整體比例多於研究類動詞但遠遠超過認知類動詞，如果進一步檢視言談類動詞在四個章節中所佔的比例，我發現在「方法」以及「結果」兩章節的比例相對高於在「序論」以及「結論」的比例。

整體而言，本研究的結果清楚地顯示引用並不是只有侷限在「序論」這個章節，在其它章節中，引用也常常被使用。另外，我也發現所使用的引用形式以及報導動詞常隨著不同的功能而有所變化，對於延伸式引用，這尤其是要更加留意，因為它們能夠讓研究者深入地探討那些和作者的研究具有高度關聯性的文獻。

Citations play a pivotal role in academic writing. They serve as an effective tool for researchers to document, accumulate, and advance academic knowledge in academic discourse communities. Despite their importance, a majority of the studies on citations have been conducted by information scientists. Inspection of citations from the perspective of applied linguistics is relatively limited. Moreover, while previous research has created various typologies for analysis of citations, most of them focus only on examining one single dimension of citations, e.g., forms of citations or reporting verbs in citations. Few studies have been done to relate forms and functions of citations and consider their rhetorical contexts simultaneously.

This study aims to examine citations in research articles in terms of their forms, discourse functions, and reporting verbs. The three dimensions of citations were further explored in the context of the four major rhetorical sections of RAs—Introduction, Method, Results, and Discussion—with a hope to reach better understanding of citations in this predominant academic genre.

Methodologically, a corpus-based and genre-based approach was taken to analyze citations in 36 applied linguistics RAs. For form-based analysis of citations, a three-tier typology was developed, integral and non-integral citations in the first tier, single-sentence citations and extended citations in the second tier, and last, four categories of subject, passive agent, possessive noun phrase, and others in single sentence citations as the third tier. For function-based analysis, a typology with nine functional categories was developed. Finally, all reporting verbs were also retrieved from citations and classified into three types–research verbs, discourse verbs, and cognition verbs, based on Thompson and Yi (1991) and Thomas and Hawes (1994).

The form-based analysis revealed that non-integral citations are used more often than integral citations, that single-sentence citations are more common than extended citations, and that citations occur more frequently in the subject position than other positions in a single-sentence citation. The function-based analysis suggested that “providing views or findings” of the cited study is the most important function of citations both in the whole RAs and in the various sections. Other prevalent functions in sections were found to characterize the rhetorical context in which they are employed. For example, the function of “providing a comparison” is more heavily used in Results and Discussion than in the other sections. Concerning reporting verbs, discourse verbs were found to occur more often than research verbs and cognition verbs. Comparing choices of reporting verbs in the four sections revealed that discourse verbs occur more often in Method and Results than in Introduction and Discussion.

Overall, the findings of this study clearly show that citations are not restricted to the Introduction section of RA; they occur and perform various discourse functions in other sections. The various functions of citations can be realized through different forms and reporting verbs. Specifically, greater attention should be paid to extended citations, since they render in-depth discussions of cited studies of great relevance to the writers’ own study.