A Contrastive Analysis Between Chinese And British Football Comment Discourses

This thesis is intended to apply theories and methodologies of cross-culturalcontrastive discourse analysis to the contrastive analysis between Chinese and BritishFCDs and interpret the similarities and differences from the cultural perspective. Thethesis consists of four chapters and deals with the following issues respectively.Chapter one is a survey of the development of contrastive linguistics, discourseanalysis and contrastive discourse analysis. Since B. L. Whorf put forward the term"contrastive linguistics" in 1941, contrastive linguistics has covered a long history ofdevelopment from the contrast at the lexical level to that at the discoursal level, fromthe contrast between languages to that between cultures. Linguists such as Whorf,Lado, Carl James, Fisiak and Basil Hatim contributed to the development ofcontrastive linguistics. In China, many scholars led by Lu Shuxiang dedicatedthemselves to the research of theories and methodologies of contrastive linguistics aswell. In the 1970s and 1980s, contrastive linguistics became increasingly concernedwith macro contrastive linguistics, such as discourse analysis, which has subsumedmany dimensions such as semiotics, psychology and sociology. The application ofcontrastive linguistics in discourse analysis grew into a new branch—contrastivediscourse analysis. With the efforts of many linguists such as Ron Scollon andSuzanne wong Scollon, Basil Hatim etc., various theories and perspectives haveincorporated into contrastive discourse analysis. Chinese scholars in contrastivediscourse analysis field have made attempts at exploring the differences andsimilarities of Chinese and English discourses in terms of cohesion and coherence,culture and discourse structure, and rhetorical mode.Chapter two expounds the theories and methodologies concerning cross-culturalcontrastive discourse analysis. Theories and methodologies applied in the contrastiveanalysis between Chinese and British FCDs are attributed to a combination offunctional discourse analysis and pragmatic discourse analysis. As for functionalcontrastive discourse analysis, tenor, which concerns such overlapping categories asformality, impersonality and technicality and another discourse parameter texture areadopted. As for the theories of pragmatics, the application of the Speech Act Theoryand politeness theory is the point of departure of pragmatic contrastive discourseanalysis. The Speech Act Theory perceives the forces of utterances of making actions.The politeness theory is explored from two aspects: face politeness strategies reflectedin the rhetorical patterns, and Face Threatening Acts (FTA). The Scollons investigatetwo face politeness strategies of involvement and independence that are associatedwith the deductive rhetorical strategy and the inductive rhetorical strategy respectively.Basil Hatim extends the basic theory of "politeness" and applies FTA advocated byBrown and Levinson to the analysis of the politeness of discourses. In addition, sincethe differences in utilizing a strategy in discourses not only due to different culturesbut also point to deep divisions among the various subcultures within a society,features possessed by discourses may find resources in cultures. Besides, themethodology of quantitative statistics is briefly introduced in this chapter as well.Chapter three focuses on the contrastive discourse analysis between Chinese andBritish FCDs, with the aim to show both theoretical and practical insights into variousdomains of language from the perspectives of functional discourse analysis andpragmatic discourse analysis. Before embarking on the specific analysis, there is abrief presentation of the basic knowledge of FCDs, including its definition,classifications, components and media. There is also a word about the validity and theclassifications of the samples. Then the specific contrastive analysis explores thedifferences and similarities in tenor, texture, politeness strategies and rhetoricalstrategies between Chinese and British FCDs. By comparison, it is found that Chineseand British FCDs differ in formality, syntactic structure as well as politenessstrategies. Chinese FCDs display lower formality, higher authority and preferinductive rhetorical strategy in discourse structure while the English ones turn to theopposite in these aspects. However, a lot of similarities do exist, for example, bothChinese and British FCDs show preference for short paragraph and the uniformtheme-rheme pattern.Chapter four, the last chapter, is intended to account for the features of Chineseand British FCDs from the cultural perspective. Some key concepts and values in bothChinese and British football cultures are examined to see how they contribute to theconstruction of FCDs. The features of British FCDs are interpreted from fourconcepts: gentility, conservatism, commercialization and reform;while the features ofChinese FCDs are interpreted from three perspectives: Confucianism,commercialization and the complexity. In this way, Chinese and British footballcultures are briefly introduced and their influences on Chinese and British FCDs aremanifested.It can be inferred that this study possesses innovative ideas and practical values.For one, this thesis is an attempt at developing the cross-cultural contrastive discourseanalysis. It for the first time applies theories and methodologies concerningcross-cultural contrastive discourse analysis to the analysis of Chinese and BritishFCDs, which is a discourse type rarely touched before. Besides, this thesis also triesto explain the concluded features of Chinese and British FCDs from the culturalperspective. For another, there are practical values in this thesis. The results of thecontrastive analysis between Chinese and British FCDs may shed light on thestrategies and styles adopted by Chinese football comment writers. Moreover, theinsight into British football culture is beneficial for the construction and developmentof Chinese football and football culture. Last but not least, this thesis ventures tosystematically study the basic knowledge of FCDs, including its definition,classifications, components and media, which is rarely done before in the field ofsports journalism in China.