Abstract Summary
This study analyzes modifiers in seven English-medium Master’s thesis defenses from four Taiwan universities. Modifiers are frequently used to co-structure institutionally accredited defense discourses and secure original contributions to disciplinary knowledge. Disparities can be attributed to the influence of institutional duties, dynamic roles, and communicative aims in distinct interaction patterns.
Abstract :
Universities in many Asian countries such as Taiwan actively advocate the globalization of higher education, to enhance competitiveness and attract more international and local students. To achieve this goal, a shift to the use of English as the medium of instruction and of social activities has become a common approach. The recent increase of English as a lingua franca in the tertiary education of non-English-speaking countries has generated interesting phenomena. This has become the focus of research on areas such as challenges of English-medium instruction and academic assessment. Many empirical studies on postgraduate level academic assessment have focused on theses/dissertations; oral forms of assessment such as dissertation/thesis defenses remain largely underexplored. The present study aims to address this underexplored area by analyzing seven English-medium master’s thesis defenses conducted in four universities in Taiwan, with a specific focus on the use of modifiers by committees and candidates of different nationalities, comprising Taiwan, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Japan, and Gambia.
The study reveals a broad distribution of modifiers in the defense corpus, which adds to the research on the commonality of linguistic features in various academic genres and implies that academic discourse norms play a greater role than linguistic/cultural conventions in their widespread prevalence. Striking similarities in the type and frequency of the modifiers of the committee and candidate sub-corpora suggest their functions as effective rhetorical elements, and that they are used by both groups to co-structure institutionally accredited defense discourses, secure original contributions to disciplinary knowledge, and denote the acculturation of new members to the academic community. However, significant disparities occur, which can be attributed to the influence of institutional duties, dynamic roles, and communicative aims in distinct interaction patterns. Role fluidity is largely a manifestation of the enhanced resourcefulness of committees in helping candidates succeed in the high-stakes event.
