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rhetoric arms them with both verbal and non-verbal means tomeet their ends.Previous studies on abstracts have offered a variety of perspectives from thelanguage features to the interpersonal meaning encoded in this genre, facilitatingunderstanding and use of this particular genre. However, few studies have been done tostudy the rhetorical motives and strategies behind these. And the present study attemptsto make some contribution in this respect. The author aims to combine Kenneth Burke’sNew Rhetoric with Appraisal Theory, so as to form a new framework for analyzingacademic abstracts. The new framework is intended to be one that can both analyze thesurface structure and dig into the rhetorical process behind it.The author terms the new framework “Rhetoric-Appraisal Approach”, whichimplies a combination of Burkean New Rhetoric and the Appraisal Theory. Analysisdone within this framework will begin with quantitative collection of data aboutRhetoric-Appraisal resources, followed by qualitative analysis of the rhetorical motivesand rhetorical process behind these Rhetoric-Appraisals. In Chapter 2 we will brieflyreview previous studies on abstracts, from which we can see previous studies analyzedquantitatively the discoursal structures or linguistic features of abstracts from a varietyof perspectives. This is an inevitable trend in a world overwhelmed by and addicted toquantitative studies. Although the academic community has agreed upon acomprehensive methodology that incorporates both quantitative and qualitative methods,the fact is many prefer the positivistic method which appears objective and is moreeasily accepted by peers. Is this not an obvious proof of the existence of rhetoricalmotive? By incorporating qualitative analysis of rhetorical motives and rhetoricalprocess under the framework of Burkean New Rhetoric, the New Rhetoric-AppraisalApproach can complement previous studies and dig deeper into abstract.This research is of both theoretical and practical significance. Its theoretical valuelies in that 1) it not only provides empirical evidence for Kenneth Burke's New Rhetoric,which is applicable to analyze academic abstracts, but also offers (by incorporatingBurke’s ideas with the Appraisal Theory) a new direction for applying Burke’s ideas; 2)it constructs a new theoretical framework for discourse analysis which can be used toanalyze both surface structures and rhetorical motives underneath; 3) it validates theeffectiveness of the new framework by analyzing 16 Chinese abstracts and 16 Englishabstracts respectively; 4) the analysis provides explorative inquiry into rhetoricalmotives hidden within academic abstracts paving the way for future studies on abstracts.At the practical level, it is helpful for researchers to write effective abstracts or translateabstracts effectively. On one hand, they can guide people in writing or translatingacademic abstracts; on the other hand, they can help people better understand therhetorical strategies and techniques authors use in their papers in order to make readersidentify with their claims.

1.2 Scope of the present study

The present study will mainly focus on traditional journal abstracts and in order toeliminate linguistic variations between different disciplines as much as possible, we willonly study data from linguistic journals. This is done out of two reasons: one, Swales(1990) claims that there is considerable variation of linguistic structures i本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。