4.1.1　Data source

The data have been collected from the PhD dissertation proposal presentation meetings in a Chinese context, so it is necessary to take a breif look at this specific genre of spoken academic interaction.

The PhD dissertation proposal presentation meetings are a very important academic event for PhD candidates in the process of doing their doctoral projects in China. Such meetings are often convened by the candidates’ supervisors, who invite several other scholars from the same or similar research fields to form a committee to evaluate whether the dissertation proposal presented by the candidate is valuable and feasible. The evaluation, questioning and advising are the main speech acts involved in such a context. Although these speech acts and various other speech acts are involved, giving advice is the most important task for the members of the committee in this particular institutional interaction.

For each meeting, participants mainly include several professors(generally 5, but the number may vary), one PhD candidate, one secretary and some other participants. The PhD candidate in this academic event is supposed to present his/her dissertation proposal, answer the questions from the committee and seek for some advice from the committee. The secretary records some important questions asked and suggestions offered by the committee and at the same time the PhD candidate’s answers to the questions are also recorded. Other participants are the audience, who are mainly PhD candidates or MA students from the same or similar research fields. To some extent, the PhD dissertation proposal presentations are similar to the PhD dissertation defences because the members of the committee can question the PhD student in the same way as would be done in a PhD dissertation defence. They are also to some extent similar to the thesis seminars, because the members of the committee can offer some advice to the presenters or express their opinions on what they are discussing, just as the participants do in a thesis seminar. However, these genres are fundamentally different because their major goals are different.

The organizational structure of the Chinese PhD dissertation proposal presentation meetings often includes four phases in terms of main activities in each phase: opening (the chairperson of the committee announces the opening of the meeting), making the presentation (the PhD candidate presents his/her doctoral project), questioning and advising (the members of the committee ask questions and offer suggestions), and closing (announced by the chairperson of the committee). This study will focus on Phase 3, in which questions are asked and suggestions are made by the members of the committee. It is this phase that makes the PhD dissertation proposal meetings distinctive from other genres of spoken academic interaction. However,compared with questioning and other speech acts, advising is the most prominent speech act in this academic event since the main purpose of this academic event is to polish and promote the PhD candidate’s doctoral project to make it more workable.