Yingjun Chen

EAP-506
Nov 21, 2016
Assignment 4: Language Analysis
Besides what we analyze in the last assignment, we also need to know about how
the language is use in the article. In this paper, I will use some ways of language
analysis to describe the language use in this article.
First, we are going to talk about the academic style choices the author made.
People can use different choices to express the same idea. In academic articles,
authors need to use a formal one to express their meanings. In this paper, I am going
to talk about some formal vocabularies the author selected. First of all, in academic
articles it is more formal to use long form instead of contractions. In this article, I do
not find any contractions. For example, it has been long recognized by investors,
standard setters, and researchers (p.568). The author did not use its been to
express it has been in this sentence. Second, using mid-position adverbs is more
formal than initial or final position adverbs in academic articles. In this article, the
author said: we should expect the managerial pay-for-performance sensitivity to
increase (decrease) more significantly for central-government-controlled firms than
for local-government-controlled firms (p.569). We analyze the two types of firms
separately because we expect the effect of the mandatory new CAS adoption (p.569).
This example shows that the author put the adverbs like significantly and separately in
the middle of the sentence to make the article more formal. Also, I found the author
used a direct question in the article. In hypothesis 2, she wrote How does the
mandatory new CAS adoption affect the managerial pay-for-performance sensitivity
for local-government-controlled firms versus central-government-controlled

firms?(p.575) to extend the next hypothesis. I think even though it is less formal to
use direct questions, in this article this direct question made the article structure more
diverse. So I think it is acceptable to use direct question here.
In academic articles, it is normal to use some specialized words in different fields.
The author also uses some specialized words in this article. She mentioned CAS
Chinese Accounting Standards in the abstract. Also, she used ISAB which means
International Accounting Standards Board and FASB means the U.S. Financial
Accounting Standards Board.
Whats more, we need to consider some language use in academic articles such as
determiners and finite words or nonfinite words. Now I am going to discuss the other
two topics of language use in this article.
The first is determiners which includes quantity, definiteness, possession and
sequence. For example, the author wrote besides the fact that it is the representative
weak investor protection country, China is interesting to study in itself because China
is the largest developing country that has embraced IFRS (p.569). In this sentence,
the author used a definite wordthe, to describe the fact that China cannot give
enough protection to investors, I think the author has used the word accurately. Also,
the author used singular and indefinite word a to express the countryChina. I
think the author used the determiners well because when I read the sentences with
determiners I will understand the meaning clearly.
Second, the author also used finite verbs in the article. For example, the author
said: there is a large and growing accounting literature devoted to assessing the
consequences of mandatory IFRS adoption around the world. Most study in this
literature focus on the valuation usefulness of financial reporting (p.569). In this
sentence, the finite word is devote. Not only the correct use of finite words keeps

the professionals of an author but also helps readers to know whether this time period
that the author studied is suitable for them.