Authorial voice constructed in citation in literature reviews of doctoral theses: Variations across training contexts

Abstract

Abstract Constructing authorial voice is considered essential in English academic texts. Citation as an important discursive feature contributing to authorial voice has been underexplored, despite fruitful research on citation practices. It also remains largely unknown whether variations in citation-based voice construction exist in doctoral theses completed across training contexts. This study explores and compares authorial voice constructed in citation in the literature review chapters of 20 doctoral theses written by home-grown and overseas-trained Chinese writers (HGWT and OTWT), complemented by interviews with four of the 20 writers. It was found that compared to the HGWT, the OTWT displayed significantly greater use of non-integral citations, “author as agent” integral forms, and summary that contribute to authorial voice. Descriptive statistics for the two subcorpora also suggested that authorial voice was more often communicated via lexical devices loaded with evaluation by the ten home-grown writers whereas the ten overseas-trained writers preferred syntactic and discoursal devices. While the present results are more suggestive than deterministic, this study highlights the importance of promoting novice writers awareness of the obscure and often unnoticed role of citation in constructing authorial voice.