What Lies Behind the Mirror: An Intercultural Pragmatic Approach to Citation Practices

Abstract

Abstract-Academic writers are set in the socio-cultural context, searching for recognition from potential readers with citations as the bridge. Appropriate citations, however, can be hard to achieve. In particular, for novice EFL writers, their lack of control over linguistic skills and insufficient mastery of academic conventions may lead to a more conscious approach. Kecskes proposed the socio-cognitive approach from the intercultural pragmatic perspective, which was adopted to analyze the citation practices conducted by three Chinese doctoral students and the results suggest that participants' citation practices could be better viewed as a privatized process of collective salience and co-constructed academic conventions, with the interplay of societal and cognitive factors as the main driving force herein.