Evaluative language in discussion sections of doctoral theses: Similarities and differences between L1 Chinese and L1 English writers

•A corpus of doctoral thesis discussion sections was constructed.•The corpus was annotated for Appraisal – Engagement features.•Features associated with the communicative purpose of the genre are discussed.•L1 Chinese and L1 English writers showed similar evaluative language patterns.•A genre-specific feature of Appraisal – Engagement is proposed.

Given the consensus that the discussion section of a doctoral thesis is a difficult text to write, we conduct an investigation into the evaluative language choices made in a small corpus of twelve doctoral discussions from a single institution and discipline. Our analytical approach is based on the Engagement sub-system of Martin and White's (2005) Appraisal framework. Using this framework we are able to uncover the evaluative language choices which appear most typical of this part-genre, and additionally to propose a genre-specific addition to the framework. We then make a series of comparisons of the choices made by L1 (first language) Chinese and L1 English writers in our corpus. We show that there are no statistically significant differences in the patterns of choices, and so conclude that, in the context and at the level researched, first language does not seem to be a variable which influences evaluative language choices.