The Rhetorical Functions of Sub-technical Vocabulary: An Analysis of Eridence, Researcb and Result in Linguistic Journal Articles

By means of analyzing the concordancing lines extracted from corpus,this paper aims to examine the structures and the corresponding rhetorical functions of sub-technical vocabulary in different sections of linguistic journal articles,such as abstract,introduction,literature review,findings,discussion and conclusion. We choose three sub-technical items as research objects,namely evidence,research and result. The evidence from the corpus shows that in different sections of the linguistic journal articles,there is an apparent difference in the usages and structures of the sub-technical vocabulary. And these different usages and structures can help the writer achieve certain rhetorical functions in writing,such as establishing a research territory,pointing out a gap in the previous related studies,and so on. There is a high correlation between the structures and rhetoric functions of the subtechnical vocabulary which can be employed to form the rhetorical moves in academic texts. The findings suggests that learners should have a good command of the structures and the corresponding rhetorical functions of the sub-technical vocabulary in order to improve their skills of reading and writing academic papers.