7.3 Limitations and Suggestions of the Future Stud...
This research is an attempt to outline some features of CMs in different disciplines of authors in different linguistic-cultural backgrounds.However,it is by no means an exhaustive research of CMs in EAPs.The limitations of this study are listed as follows:
First of all,the study only presents a rough picture about the classification of CMs,and the distribution of CMs in different disciplines and by authors from different linguistic-cultural backgrounds.However,there are several points needed to be studied in the future.For example,it is necessary to go further to analyze the specific contexts in which the patterns of CMs occur.What’s more,this dissertation only compares the disciplinary and cultural-linguistic differences of the CMs separately.In the future,the interrelationship between these two dimensions can be examined.For instance,there are more patterns to be compared:AEs×N v.s.AEs×H,ANEs×N v.s.ANEs×H,AEs×N v.s.ANEs×N,AEs×H v.s.ANEs×H,etc.
Second,this dissertation does not extend its study to a comparison of CMs in different generic structures.Genre is a very important concept in SFL and in EAPs.Writers will use different patterns of CMs in different generic structures in order to realize different communicative purposes.That is to say,how to select the patterns of CMs is greatly influenced by the nature of generic structures.In the future,it is necessary to analyze the distribution of CMs in different generic structures of the EAPs.
Third,this study only focuses on the explicit conjunctive markers in EAPs and leaves the implicit ones aside.In fact,implicit CMs also play an important role in academic discourse.What’s more,it is found in Chapter 6 that East-Asian authors incline to use more implicit conjunctive resources in their writings due to their writing conventions and cultural communities,etc.So in future it will be more meaningful to add the research of implicit CMs as the stance markers.
Fourth,the interpretation of the subcategories of CMFEs and CMCEs is not thorough enough.Although Chapters 4-6 make detailed statistic researches on the distribution of various types of CMs,qualitative interpretation is still needed.In the future,for example,there should be more detailed explanation about the reasons of the different distribution of various sub-categories of the CMs.
Fifth,the factual practical application of the research results is out of the scope of the research.Although this study has done the theoretical research of the features of CMs in EAPs,but we need real experiments to test whether these findings would help teachers and students in their teaching and writing.In the future,it is hoped that there will be some real experiments by teachers and students to check whether the findings of this study can help their teaching and learning.
All in all,the whole research is about the function of CMs in construing authorial stance and the comparison of CMs in EAPs of different disciplines and by AEs and ANEs respectively.It is hoped that this research can attract the interest of linguists,scholars,teachers and students to pay attention to the interpersonal function of CMs,the influence of various disciplines and linguistic-cultural backgrounds.