Introduction

Chapter 1Literature Review

1.1Studies on News Discourses

1.1.1Studies on News Discourses in China

1.1.2Studies on News Discourses Abroad

1.2Studies on International Political News Report Discourses 

Chapter 2The Theoretical Framework

2.1Theories Adopted in the Contrastive Study on

International Political News Report Discourses

2.1.1Functional Discourse Analysis

2.1.2Critical Discourse Analysis 

2.2Methodology: Contrastive Illustration and

Quantitative Statistics

2.3The Scope and Significance of the Contrastive

Study of International Political News Report Discourses

2.3.1The Scope of International Political

News Report Discourses

2.3.2The Significance of the Contrastive Study of

International Political News Report Discourses

Chapter 3The Contrastive Analysis of Chinese and British

International Political News Report Discourses

3.1The Sample Discourses

3.1.1Sample Collection

3.1.2The Background Story of the Samples

3.2The Contrastive Analysis of the Samples

3.2.1Classification

3.2.2Transformation

3.2.3The Transitivity System

3.2.4Intertextuality

3.2.5Modality

3.2.6Thematic Structures

3.2.7Cohesion

3.2.8Rhetorical Devices

3.3Summary

Chapter 4Implications of the Study

4.1Implications for the Translation of International

Political News Report Discourses

4.1.1Translation at the Lexical Level

4.1.2Translation at the Sentential Level

4.1.3Translation at the Textual Level

4.1.4Tips for Translators

4.2Implications for the Comprehension and

Teaching of the International Political News 

Conclusion

Bibliography

Appendix I

Appendix II

Introduction

The viewpoint of the contrastive discourse analysis in this thesis has evolved from the studies of my supervisor, Prof. Yang Min, and her graduate students, Miss Ji Aimei, Miss Jiang Yiqun, Mr Wang Junjie, Miss Gao Shan and Miss Liu Na. I venture to make further development of the studies by applying Halliday’s systemic functional grammar and theories of critical discourse analysis to the contrastive analysis of Chinese and British international political news report discourses. 

The previous studies of my supervisor and her graduate students set good examples for me on contrastive analyses of text types like Qilu tourism culture discourses (Ji Aimei, 2002), entrepreneurs’ discourses (Jiang Yiqun, 2003), Shandong corporate texts (Wang Junjie, 2003), state leaders’ discourses (Gao Shan, 2004) and TV talk shows (Liu Na, 2005). With the instruction of my supervisor, I choose the international political news report discourses as the subjects of my study.

The studies of news discourses have received much scholarly interest from mass communication researchers, linguists, stylists, and discourse analysts. This attention is justified when we realize how important news is in our everyday life. Most of our social and political knowledge and beliefs about the world are derived from the dozens of news reports we read or see every day. In such an age of information and communication globalization, the international political news report discourse, which informs us of the happenings in the other countries, such as foreign affairs and the bilateral or multilateral relationships, etc. serves as a window to the world and a window for the world to our country at the same time.

Having specified the scope of the study, I collect my sample discourses from the official websites of prestigious newspapers to ensure the credibility of the analysis. Research methods like illustration and quantitative statistics are adopted to guarantee the validity of the results of the analysis. Through the contrastive analysis of the international political news reports, it is revealed that there are differences and similarities between the Chinese and the British sample discourses and I strive to find out the reasons for these differences and similarities. The conclusions of the contrastive analysis are applied to give some implications for the translation and teaching of the international political news report discourses.

This tentative study is an initial endeavor to conduct contrastive analysis of the international political news report discourses as a subvariety of news discourses from the perspectives of the systemic functional grammar and critical discourse analysis. I hope the present study can give some inspiration to the future researchers in this field. 

<<<Chapter 1Literature Review

Chapter 1Literature Review

1.1Studies on News Discourses

The news discourse as a frequently used and very practical genre has long draw the attention of linguists and stylists. As a complex subject, the news discourse has been studied from different perspectives, with abundant achievements and still a lot of work to be done in future studies. 

These are various kinds of classifications of the news discourse according to different standards. For instance, to classify according to the topic that is covered, there is business news, sports news, political news, entertainment news, science and technology news, etc, and according to the place that the news takes place, there is international news, national news and local news. Furthermore, there are various news styles for journalism, such as news reports, features, editorials, etc. Although this thesis takes only one subvariety of the news discourse as the subject of the study, a survey of what have been done in the study of the news discourse as a whole will shed light on my study.

1.1.1Studies on News Discourses in China 

The studies on news discourses in China at the beginning are restricted to the study of the stylistic features at the lexical level from the perspective of rhetoric. For instance, Zong Aizhi (1985) studies the artistic effect of the vivid diction of journalism English on the readers, and Lin Jue (1987) studies the emotive elements in diction, semantic choices and metaphor in journalism language. These rhetoric studies focus on rhetoric devices and the influence of the language on the readers, but neglect the relationship of the different components in the discourse. Therefore, these studies based on traditional rhetoric are comparatively superficial and cannot reveal the nature of news discourses. 

Hou Weirui (1987) analyzes the stylistic features of the language in the headline, the lead and the body of the news report. For instance, the different ways of typesetting and font can make the headline more attractive and the rhetorical devices like pun, alliteration, rhyme, etc. are of help to draw the readers’ attention. His study takes a step further to analyze the sentence pattern and text structure of the body of the news report. 

In their monograph on stylistics, Wang Zuoliang and Ding Wangdao (1987) introduce the stylistic features of news reports from perspectives of the sentence structure, vocabulary, and the discourse structure. Their analysis is influenced by theories of Chomsky’s TG grammar and the formalistic stylistics. They use the method of stylistic statistics to analyze the language features in the news discourse such as the length of the sentence, the structure of verb phrases and noun phrases, the complexity of vocabulary, etc., which has secured the validity of the analysis. Sentence is still the basic unit of their analysis, and their analysis of the discourse structure is limited to the conclusion that in news report discourses, the first few sentences usually contain the most important information in order to attract the readers. The analysis focuses mainly on the language features of the surface structure and pays little attention to the sociocultural elements in the news discourse. 

With the popularity of Halliday’s systemic functional grammar in China, a lot of researchers and linguists adopt Halliday’s theories in the study of news discourse analysis. Context is one of the most frequently used concepts in news discourse analysis. Shang Yuanyuan (2001) analyzes a corpus of news headlines in order to compare and indicate the impact of the variables of context on both generic structural potential and specific language forms. Based on the contextual theories of the systemic functional grammar, the article explores the language features of news headlines and investigates the relationship of context, generic structure features and the reflection in language forms of these features. The study illustrates the functional view on language, that is, language form is the realization of the meaning potential. 

Nie Renfa and Du Chunzi (2002) analyze the context of some Chinese news discourses. They point out that the contextual elements, namely the temporal elements, spatial elements and actor elements, serve as a connection to the world outside the discourse, and the analysis of these elements reveals how discourses are connected with the external world. They analyze the characteristics of the contextual elements in news discourses and conclude that these features reflect the objectivity and the close connection of news discourses with the world outside the discourses. 

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