The Contrastive Analysis Of Modality In Native And Nonnative News Reports

Modality, as a hot topic, has long been discussed by linguists, philosophers and logicians. Some scholars have make researches on modality. However, lots of those researches are restricted to the study of modal auxiliaries. Moreover, although there are some researches which make contrastive analyses of modality in English and Chinese, contrastive analyses of modality in native and nonnative English texts are rare. News report is a major part in news text, and the characteristics of news report are most representative. So, this thesis focuses on the contrastive study of modality in native and nonnative news reports. The author mainly aims at analyzing modality values and orientations reflected by modality expressions in native and nonnative news reports.Based on Halliday's framework of modality, this paper aims to explore modality values and orientations in native and nonnative English news reports through the analysis of modality expressions in native and nonnative English news reports and their relations to modality values and orientations. Each modality value is expressed by certain modality expressions. And each modality orientation is also conveyed by certain modality expressions.The main research methods in this paper are quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis. The proportion of each modality value and orientation can be calculated by counting the occurrence frequency of modality expressions. So, the different inclinations of modality values and orientations in native and nonnative news reports can be detected and compared. Selected samples in this paper are ten pieces of news reports from New York Times and ten pieces of news reports from China Daily respectively.Through the analysis, we can draw a conclusion that native news reporters are likely to apply modality expressions with median and low values. And subjective orientations are more implicit and objective orientations are more explicit. While nonnative reporters are inclined to employ modality expressions with median and high values. And they are more explicit in subjective orientation and implicit in objective orientation.