Abstract

The orientation toward a knowledge-based economy has led to the increasing need to pursue advanced degrees to further improve one’s competitiveness in society. Research on postgraduate programs has thus sparked interest from multiple perspectives, among which, generated written artifacts such as dissertations have become the center of attention. However, dissertation defenses (DDs), i.e., the oral output, seem to have not been given due attention from applied linguists, a research gap this paper intends to address. Based on a corpus of five Masters-level DDs collected in an English as a lingua franca context, this study explores the interactions between the DD participants, namely, the students, advisors, and examiners, through the investigation of their use of Engagement resources under the Appraisal theory. It was found that DDs are embedded with face-threatening acts, in which the participants employ a combination of Engagement resources to strategically reify their identities/roles and establish rapport with others.

抽象的

面向知识型经济的导向导致对追求更高学位以进一步提高个人在社会中的竞争力的需求不断增加。因此，对研究生课程的研究从多个角度激发了人们的兴趣，其中，诸如论文之类的书面文物已成为人们关注的焦点。但是，应用语言学家似乎并未对论文答辩（DDs）即口头产出给予应有的重视，这是本文要解决的研究空白。基于对在收集英语作为通用语语境五大高手级的DD语料库，本研究探讨了DD参与者之间的交互，即学生，顾问和考官，通过他们使用的调查参与评价理论下的资源。研究发现，DD嵌入了威胁人脸的行为，其中参与者使用参与资源的组合来战略性地确定其身份/角色并与他人建立融洽的关系。