| Nominalization is a very common phenomenon in English and represents the direction of the development of human cognition (Halliday, 1996:44). Nominalization refers to the process (congruently worded as verbs) or the quality (congruently worded as adjectives) which are reworded metaphorically as nouns. The nominalizations are characterized by an objective, precise and solemn style, scientific discourse and news discourse are two styles closely related to our life, this thesis, based on Halliday's Systemic-functional Grammar theory, makes a comparative study on nominalization in scientific discourse and news discourse in terms of three metafunctions, that is, ideational, interpersonal, and textual functions and has yielded the following major findings:First, considering ideational function. The employment of nominalization makes the lexical density of the clause become higher, thus achieves the effect of conciseness and economy. Furthermore, nominalization can produce the effect of highlighting some stylistic features of scientific discourse and news discourse, such as objectivity, formality and technical nature of scientific discourse; neutrality, objectivity and impartiality of news discourse, so as to make the information more natural and acceptable.Second, regarding interpersonal function. In the mood system, nominalization can impersonalize the information of scientific and news discourse, obscuring the agent of the process; in terms of modality system, nominalization makes the information conveyed becomes difficult to query, and the reporter's personal evaluation can be taken for as a fact by the public.Third, in respect of textual functional. Nominalization can serve as the theme of a clause, form a special thematic progression pattern and therefore promote thematic progression, which in turn facilitate textual cohesion; in addition, nominalization can shift information focus.The present study also analyzes the relationship between the frequency of nominalization and register. Regarding the field, we can find that the frequency of the employment of nominalization in practical discourses, such as scientific discourses and news discourses, is quite high because of their characteristics. Concerning the tenor, the frequency of nominalization in scientific discourse is higher than that of news discourse. With a view to the mode, nominalization occurs more frequently in written language, such as scientific and news discourse than in spoken language.The author will feel greatly relieved if the present study has implications on the teaching and learning of stylistics, scientific English and news English, etc. Nominalization is an important language phenomenon in scientific and news English, having a right understanding of the functions is helpful to English teachers and promotes the creativity of the target language use on English learners in scientific English and news English learning. |
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