Epistemic necessity and obligation modals in Chinese EFL academic writing: exploring L1 influence and disciplinary variation on the use of must, have to, and should

Sun, Qiuyi ORCID: 0009-0007-3552-4508 (2024). Epistemic necessity and obligation modals in Chinese EFL academic writing: exploring L1 influence and disciplinary variation on the use of must, have to, and should. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

The use of modals is a key feature in academic writing, yet Chinese EFL students often find them challenging. Substantial research has been undertaken on their use in short argumentative essays on general topics, but little attention has been given to discipline-specific academic writing. To address this, this study examines Chinese EFL undergraduate dissertations, focusing on three epistemic necessity and obligation modals: must, have to, and should, and explores how first languages and disciplines influence their use.

This study employs a corpus-based approach to examine the modals in terms of frequency, meaning distribution, and main verbs co-occurring with them. The semantics of the verb collocates are systematically examined through distributional semantic analysis, an approach not previously applied in the study of modality in EFL student writing. The quantitative analysis is complemented by a qualitative analysis exploring distinctive features of the modals in academic writing. A Chinese learner corpus (LC), consisting of dissertations in two disciplines, Business and Management (BM), and English Literature (EL), is compared to a reference corpus (RC) that includes essays written by British students in comparable disciplinary groups, Social Science (SS) and Arts and Humanities (AH), extracted from the British Academic Written English corpus.

Epistemic use of the modals does not show statistically significant differences between Chinese and British students, though there is a slight under-representation of epistemic must in the learner corpus, which contradicts previous literature. By contrast, the two student groups use root sense of the modals significantly differently, with root must being under-represented and root should being over-represented in the learner corpus. Chinese students in LC-BM use root must and should similarly with two clusters of verb collocates to give practical suggestions for business, whereas British students in both disciplines tend to use them with verbs for assessing propositions. The variations between student groups may be indicative of influences from first languages, cultural values, and textbook presentations. In terms of disciplinary variations, epistemic must is under-represented in LC-BM and RC-SS compared to LC-EL and RC-AH, whereas root must and should show an opposite pattern. These variations could be explained by different analytical approaches and rhetorical conventions. The qualitative analysis provides a fine-grained view to explore the characteristic features of the modals in academic writing. Variations across sub-corpora are identified in terms of the textual voice expressed by the modals and their distribution across different parts of a text.

Following a mixed-methods approach, the study contributes to a more comprehensive view of must, have to, and should in Chinese EFL academic writing and underscores the influence of the first language and discipline.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

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