A Contrastive Analysis Of English And Chinese Tour Guide Speech

In recent years, China's tourism market is being continually improved, attracting more and more tourists both at home and abroad. The phenomenon results in the fact that the research on tour guide speech is playing an increasing important role in further promoting internationalization of China's tourism. At the same time, in recent years discourse analysis and comprehensive comparative discourse analysis have been developed a lot. Many scholars have done much research in these fields and published many articles. This thesis applies two of the three Metafunctions--Interpersonal Function and Textual Function Theory of Halliday'Systemic Functional Grammar into the contrastive analysis of tour guide speech at scenic spot both in English and Chinese, from which to find the similarities and differences of discourses between them. After the contrastive analysis, this thesis provides some suggestions for the writing and translating of tour guide speech in both languages.In the mood and modality system of interpersonal metafunction, the research concentrates on the mood and modality meaning at lexical level and the mood function of phrases. In the textual metafunction, the research involves two aspects: one is the Theme system which consists of thematic progression and unmarked and marked Theme. The other is cohesion system which is mainly with regard to reference, ellipsis, substitute and conjunction of the discourses. Some contrastive analysis is made in tour guide speech between English and Chinese.From the angle of the interpersonal function, both English and Chinese adapt positive low or median mood and more adjuncts of mood in degree, intensity and adjuncts of temporality in time at lexical level. Comment adjuncts nearly never occur in both languages. The difference lies in the fact that in English the most frequently used modal verb is"will", but in Chinese"可以".The number of adjuncts of mood in degree, adjuncts of mood in intensity in Chinese is much more than that in English. In respect of mood function in phrases, the similarity lies in the fact that the frequency share the same order with the most frequently used nouns phrases, and the least verbal or adjectival phrases. The difference is that the usage of adverbial, prepositional and verbal phrases serving as subjects is more than that in English.From the angle of textual function, some research first focuses on the Theme System. The thesis makes the contrastive analysis of thematic progression in English and Chinese discourses and obtains the following results: all of the four progression patterns are used in English and Chinese discourse, in which the Constant Rheme Pattern and the Inverted-Z Form Pattern are seldom used. It is therefore necessary to pay special attention to the choice of Theme of sentences. From the marked or unmarked Theme angle, we know that the unmarked Themes surpass the marked Theme. Among unmarked Themes, nominal phrases are the most number and prepositional and adverbial phrases serving as Themes are very common. By way of contrast, the pronouns serving as Themes in English outnumber those in Chinese.With respect to cohesion system, this thesis makes contrastive analysis of English and Chinese discourses in terms of reference, substitution, ellipsis and conjunction. Reference can be divided into personal and demonstrative reference. The similarity is that both English and Chinese discourses employ the devices of personal reference, among which the English word"it"and the Chinese word"它"are used more frequently than others. The difference is that English versions exceed Chinese ones in the use of personal reference overwhelmingly. English has relative pronouns which don't exist in Chinese discourses, we can use the method of repeating the original word to perform the same function.In demonstrative reference, reference in Chinese"这/那+名词"is used most frequently, which is similar of the usage of"the"in English discourses. The difference lies in the fact that English versions surpass Chinese ones in the use of demonstrative reference. We find that"that"is used much more frequently than"this"just quite the reverse of Chinese. Chinese exceeds English in ellipsis both in frequency and variety. Nominal ellipsis is the main form in Chinese. The verbal ellipsis seldom occurs.In cohesion system, for tourism discourse, neither English nor Chinese abounds in conjunctive devices. The shift from one scene to another or the historical events can be done naturally and implicitly instead of explicitly by using conjunctive devices. Among the conjunctions, most of them belongs to elaboration; extension-addition; extension-adversative; enhancement spatio-temporal; enhancement causal-conditional.The research indicates that the Functional Linguistics is really an applicable and effective method of comparative discourse analysis. We should pay attention to the similarities and difference of the two languages when writing or translating the tour guide speech.