A Comparative Study of English Academic Introductions by Chinese and French Scholars: From the Perspective of Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions

Abstract

This paper makes a systematic review of Hofstede’s cultural dimension theory, mainly looking at its development track, scope of application, and some limitations in contemporary times. At the same time, the paper also integrates the core findings of academic English writing research on mother tongue transfer, discourse structure, syntactic complexity, word string distribution, stance expression and reporting strategies, focusing on how the cultural dimension affects the rhetorical choice and communicative convention of academic discourse. This study takes the English academic introductions written by Chinese and French scholars as the analysis object, and finds that there are indeed some structural differences between the two countries in the dimensions of power distance, individualism and collectivism, long-term orientation, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity and femininity, as well as indulgence and restraint. These differences synergistically influence the realization of textual moves, author identity construction, stance-marker preferences, evaluative tendencies in reporting verbs, and the degree of logical explicitness in cohesive mechanisms within introductions. Although existing studies have revealed macro-discourse divergences between Chinese and English-speaking scholars as well as between Chinese and French scholars, an empirically verifiable mapping model between cultural dimension parameters and micro-linguistic features of introductions has yet to be established. Furthermore, there remains a lack of in-depth depiction regarding the intercultural academic writing practices of French scholars.