Register variations in homepage bios of humanities scholars at Chinese universities and those in English-speaking countries

Abstract The scholar’s homepage has become an indispensable genre in scholarly life. Previous studies have explored techniques for extracting specific details from scholars’ homepage biographies, such as their publication history and educational background. However, there is a lack of research investigating the linguistic properties of homepage bios. Register refers to the linguistic variations that configure the contextual factors constraining language use. To examine the register variations in the homepage bios of humanities scholars at ‘Project 985’ Chinese universities and those at QS Top-100 universities from English-speaking countries, Multi-Dimensional Analysis and Wmatrix are used to conduct a corpus-based analysis. The entire corpus consists of two sub-corpora: one for the English homepage bios of humanities scholars at Chinese universities and another for those at universities in English-speaking countries. Each sub-corpus comprises 288 texts. The results show that the former sub-corpus is closer to academic prose, whereas the latter is closer to broadcast discourse. The former exhibits a higher degree of narrativity, is more loosely tied to the situation, and refers less frequently to real-time production constraints, while the latter exhibits a higher level of interaction and personal involvement and tends more to persuade readers. Scholars in Chinese universities tend to emphasize social titles, the role of doctoral supervisors, and academic achievements, while those in English-speaking countries are inclined to highlight personal descriptions and relationships with others in their homepage bios. To some extent, this reflects the differences in working cultures between Chinese universities and those in English-speaking countries.