如何在一場學術戰爭中生存：博士學位論文口試的言談策略分析

在過去幾年中，學術英語研究領域裡，極大部分的學者都將注意力放在學術英文寫作的研究上。但是在近十年來，部份學者們也試圖將觸角延伸到學術英語口語層面的研究。然而，截至目前，在學術英語口語的既有研究當中，僅有極少數的學者曾嘗試分析學位口試的言談。學位論文口試對於碩、博士生而言，代表著其學術生涯中的一個重要里程碑，然而在學術英語的研究中，論文口試卻一直被忽略。因此，本文希望藉由四場博士論文口試的言談分析，獲取對此文體更深入的了解。比起其他學術口語的文體，蒐集論文口試的過程更加困難許多，不過，本研究者有幸在指導教授的協助之下，得以幸運地參與並攝影下兩場台灣國立大學建築研究所博士生論文口試過程。為了能與這兩場中文口試相比，在MICASE(the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English)線上資料庫中，本研究也採用並分析了的其中的兩場博士論文口試，分別來自音樂系以及社會心理學系。本研究沒有將焦點放在整場口試，僅集中目標單獨檢視這四場口試當中的問答部分(The Q-A section)，並深入探討其中的語言行為。更精確的說，本研究的重點在於比較身處台灣與美國的兩組口試委員如何在問答時段中提問，以及比較有著不同語言背景的博士候選人如何回應口試委員提出的意見問題。除此之外，本研究也比較身為口試委員之一的兩地不同的指導教授，在問答時段時採取什麼樣的立場與策略參與互動。本研究發現，這三方的參與者（即口試委員，指導教授及博士候選人）似乎因為文化和語言背景的差異，而採取了一些不同的言談策略。首先，當提問或提出意見時，美國的口試委員傾向以與候選人討論的口吻進行；台灣的口試委員則偏向直接給予批評或提供看法，而少與候選人有一來一往的討論。再者，當回應口試委員時，美國和台灣的候選人相比，前者回應及答辯較積極；至於指導教授的部分，美國的指導教授表現較類似其他口試委員，以針對論文提問為主；台灣的老師則傾向針對論文回應其他口試委員。雖然本研究只針對博士生的論文口試分析，提供了一些不曾在過去被提出的觀察結果，但畢竟本研究只分析了四場人文社會領域的博士生論文口試，為了更深入了解學位論文口試的各面向與特性，後續研究還是迫切需要的。

關鍵字

博士學位論文口試；言談策略

並列摘要

In the field of English for Academic Purposes (EAP), a substantial number of researchers have been studying academic writing. On the other hand, in the past decades, more and more scholars have shifted their attention from the written discourse to the spoken one. However, among the spoken genres which have been studied, little attention has been focused on the dissertation defense. It had only been sporadically investigated by very few scholars. Given that the dissertation defense which represents a milestone for master’s and doctoral studies it seems surprising that this genre has not attracted a lot of attention. To fill in this significant gap, the present study investigates the discoursal strategies used in the four PhD dissertation defense. Two Mandarin PhD defenses held in the Architecture Department at a national university in Taiwan were video-taped. Together with the other two English defenses (one in the Department of Music and the other in Social Psychology) adopted from the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English, a discourse analysis of these four PhD defenses was conducted. Instead of examining the entire defense, only the linguistic behaviors during the question and answer section (i.e., the Q-A section) were analyzed. The results show that there seems to be cultural differences in the use of various strategies during the defense between the two groups of defense participants. Firstly, while the English-speaking committee members show a tendency to negotiate their opinions with the candidates, those in the Mandarin data tend to be more judgmental. In addition, whereas the advisors in the States tend to pose more questions to the candidates, the advisor in Taiwan tends to help defend the candidates to a greater degree. Thirdly, the English-speaking candidates tend to be more active in response to the committee members than the Mandarin-speaking ones. In addition, a scrutiny of the interrelationship between the strategies used by the committee members and those employed by the candidates during the Q-A section shows some interesting and unexpected results. It was found that when the committee members were only giving general comments, the candidates tend to be somewhat argumentative in response. In addition, it was noted that the candidates have a tendency to remain silent towards the suggestions made by the committee members. To conclude, even though some interesting findings have been provided in the current study, it has to be noted that the current study only represents a preliminary attempt to analyzing the dissertation defense. Admittedly, the number of the defenses examined in the study is not large enough. In addition, the fields of the chosen defenses can not be representative of all fields. Therefore, the results of the current study may not be generalized to apply to all PhD dissertation defenses. Therefore, further research with larger language sample size is still needed.

並列關鍵字

PhD Dissertation Defenses ； Discoursal Strategies

參考文獻

Lorés, R. (2006).The referential function of metadiscourse: thing(s) and idea(s) in academic lectures. In A, Hornero, M. Luzón & S. Murillo (Eds.), Corpus linguistics: Applications for the study of English (pp. 315-334). Switzerland: Peter Lang.

Aguilar, M. (2004). The peer seminar, a spoken research process genre. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 3, 55-72.

Anthony, L. (1999). Writing research article introductions in software engineering: How accurate is a standard model? IEEE transactions on professional communication, 42(1), 38-46.

Bamford, J. (2004). Gestural and symbolic uses of the deictic "here" in academic lectures. In K. Aijmer & A-B. Stenström (Eds.), Discourse patterns in spoken and written corpora (pp. 113-138). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Bardovi-Harlig, K. & Hartford, B. S. (1990). Congruence in native and nonnative conversations: Status balance in the academic advising session. Language Learning, 40(4), 467-501.

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如何在一場學術戰爭中生存：博士學位論文口試的言談策略分析

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