The oral academic discourse socialization of mainland Chinese students in dissertation consultation

Abstract

This study investigates the nature of oral academic discourse socialization (OADS) in the dissertation consultation (DC) of mainland Chinese students and their and their supervisors' perspectives towards it. The participants are three mainland Chinese graduate students majoring in applied linguistics at a university in Hong Kong and their supervisors. This study used Hyland's (2005) stance and engagement model to count the linguistic markers used by students and supervisors in the DCs. The interview data were then combined. The students’ self-socialization strategies, their identities constructed during the DCs and students and supervisors’ reflection on their own linguistic choices were summarized accordingly. The study found that the three mainland Chinese students actively used their own agency in the self-socialization process, rather than passively accepting the influence of the academic community in the socialization process. Also, three students' OADS in their DCs may have been influenced by their and their supervisors' different understandings of the teacherstudent relationship. For graduate level students, cultural differences and psychological factors seems to be more influential factors in OADS. In addition, OADS in the DC probably is a bi-directional process in which supervisors and students influence each other. The findings of this study could help mainland Chinese students, even those from East Asian educational backgrounds, to better socialize in universities with a Western cultural background to some extent. It also fills a gap in the study of OADS in DC and the application of the Hyland's (2005) stance and engagement model to the study of dialogic spoken genres.