Phraseological patterns of reporting clauses in citations: Chinese linguistics MA theses versus international linguistics journal articles

Abstract In this study, two corpora were compiled to compare the subject types, reference types and phraseological patterns of reporting clauses in Chinese MA theses in applied linguistics and international applied linguistics journal articles. Differing from previous studies, we modified the classification criterion for reference types, dividing them into identifiable and non-identifiable categories. Under this framework, identifiable references encompass integral and non-integral citations, whereas non-identifiable references denote general references. The results revealed that: 1) Regarding subject types in reporting clauses, authors of Chinese MA theses demonstrated a stronger preference for non-human and it subjects while employing fewer human subjects compared to authors of international journal articles. 2) As for reference types in reporting clauses, authors of Chinese MA theses exhibited a significantly higher frequency of general references but fewer integral citations than authors of international journal articles. No significant differences were observed in the use of non-integral citations between the two author groups. 3) Two dominant reporting patterns in both corpora were found: integral citation + human subject and non-integral citation + non-human subject. The results of the study could provide pedagogical implications for academic writing as well as EAP pedagogy.