中英议论文写作中的直接性的对比研究

自从美国语言学家Kaplan在他的《跨文化教育中的文化思维模式》一文中声称英语写作是直接的,汉语写作是间接的,许多中国学者就想当然的接受了这一观点,但却少有人作一些实证性研究对Kaplan的假设进行验证。本研究从英汉议论文中主题句和中心思想句的使用方面对Kaplan的假设进行了验证。研究结果发现英汉议论文在写作的直接性方面并没有显著性差异。因此,我们不能想当然的认为英语写作是直接的,汉语写作是间接的。

A Contrastive Study of Directness in Chinese and English Argumentative writings

Since Kaplan, an American linguist, hypothesizes that English writing is direct while Chinese writing is indirect in his article Cultural Thought Patterns in Inter-cultural Education, many Chinese scholars take this hypothesis for granted without verifying. In order to verify Kaplan's hypothesis, in this study the author conducts a contrastive study on the using of topic sentence and thesis statement in English and Chinese argumentative writing. The result shows that there is no significant difference between English and Chinese argumentative writings in terms of directness. Therefore, it cannot be taken for granted that English writing is always direct while Chinese writing is always indirect.