A Study Of The Stylistic Characteristics Of Journalistic English And Its Reading Strategies Based On Relevance Theory

Nowadays, the economic and cultural exchange of information with foreign countries is increasing. All messages and new things are represented in mass media and one of the traditional media for news transmitting is newspaper. Newspaper as a more stable written form is becoming increasingly indispensable to people's life. Recently more and more attention has been directed to the study of journalistic English. For the English learners, reading newspaper can also serve as a way to widen their scope of knowledge and learn the ever-changing English language. The study of journalistic English is necessary to English learners, and therefore the learners might be more efficient in their learning. They have a high demand on time; they are usually concerned with the subjects that people are interested in at the present time; they must be brief-using the least space possible to convey the most information possible, and they must appear to be objective.The Relevance Theory of Sperber and Wilson regards human language communication as an ostensive-inferential cognitive process, namely the process of cognition and mutual manifestness of the cognitive environments. On one hand, the speaker sets in his utterance ostensive stimuli to achieve his information intention and communication intention. On the other hand, the listener, by using the relevance and the ostensive information provided by the speaker's ostensive behaviors, produces the context with his inferential cognitive ability, and chooses the explanation of the best relevance from various semantic expressions. Obviously, the context under the relevance theory remains changeable, uncertain and dymamic. Relevance theory is based on the definition of relevance and two general principles: cognitive principle and communicative principle. The cognitive principle means that human cognition tends to be geared to the maximization of relevance while the communicative principle indicates that utterances create presumptions of optimal relevance.This thesis presents the definition, classification and structure of journalistic English. Then, it analyzes the unique characteristics of journalistic English based on 76 pieces of news from the most influential American and British newspapers, which attempts to explore the headline, the lead, the body from cognitive and communicative perspectives. After that it is clear that the analysis of cognitive effects and processing effort results in optimal relevance as a criterion of headline; an ostensive-inferential process of lead may get an access to the general idea; correctly applying the degree of relevance and dynamic context of body interprets the"the inverted pyramid" of body. Finally, the conclusion is that relevance theory has been applied to journalistic English for the learners and discussed how it achieves effective reading strategies and improves their communicative competence.