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Top1. Introduction
Citation is the important formal aspect of source using, as well as the essential element of argumentation in academic writing. Recent years witnessed increasing interest in citation analysis in the hope of uncovering the rhetorical practice underlying the variation of citation. Effective analysis of citations depends on effective classification and description of the forms and functions of citations. Despite Swales’ (1990) dichotomy of non-integral and integral citations, views on the sub-categorization of either are quite divergent, especially for non-integral citations. This study focuses on non-integral citations. Following Thompson & Tribble’s (2001) function-based typology, we propose a form-based typology as an alternative. Based on the assumption that the specific communicative functions of language are usually associated with particular syntactic forms, this study aims to explicate the surface features associated with the functions of non-integral citations. We propose the dimensions of attribution explicitness to explain the rationale and motivation of the forms and functions of citations, despite the interview-induced claim that no clear rationales always emerge for either form or function of authors’ citing behaviors (Harwood, 2008, 2009).
Citations have been categorized in various ways, either formally (Charles, 2006; Swales, 1990) or functionally (Hyland, 2004; Harwood & Petrič, 2012; Thompson & Tribble, 2001). The widely accepted dichotomy of integral and non-integral citation, proposed by Swales (1990) is form-based (whether the names of cited author play any syntactic role in the sentence), so is the classification of integral citations (Thompson & Tribble, 2001; Swales 2014). Swales’s (2014) five-fold subcategorization (Author as subject, Author as agent, Author as adjunct, Author in NP, Author-other) is similar to but more fine-grained than Thompson & Tribble (2001). Verb-controlling citation, in Thompson & Tribble’ term, means roughly the same as Author as subject. In the same vein, the last category of both schemes are synonymous.
Naming citation subsumes the three intermediate sub-types in Swales’s scheme: Author as agent, Author as adjunct, Author in NP. The following examples are taken from Swales (2014: p.124).
- 1.
It was hypothesized by Myers (1966) that the freshwater fishes of the West Indies dispersed from Central America.
- 2.
According to Myers (1966), freshwater fishes of the West Indies likely dispersed from Central America.
- 3.
Myers’ 1966 hypothesis proposed that freshwater fishes....
All three sentences are the citational variations of the same content. In (1), the cited author “Myers” is the agent of the passive structure “be hypothesized”. In (2), the prepositional phrase “According to Myers (1966)” is the adjunct of the sentence. In (3), the author’s name (in possessive form, Myers’) is part of a noun phrase.