| Editorial is the most formal writing in news argumentation, and reveals the ideas of the general office of a newspaper that stands for the organ of authority. The newspaper editorial has distinctive communicative functions in society, and aims to provide the public with timely, accurate and balanced information about the society, its people and broader issues across the country, and intends to motivate a reader to take specific actions or mold reader's opinions. Though sharing the same social function to some extent, editorials in English and Chinese do have many different writing features that are related to different cultures. The English editorial usually focuses on persuasion, whereas the Chinese editorial is prone to concentrate on didacticism. The objective of this thesis is to find their different linguistic features and organizational patterns applied by making a contrastive discourse analysis of editorials in English and Chinese.With the help of the theories of contrastive analysis and stylistics as well as the method of discourse analysis, a contrastive discourse analysis on English and Chinese editorials based on quantitative study is made. The sample materials are downloaded from the Internet totaling 50 pieces, in which 25 Chinese editorials are selected from The People's Daily, and 25 English editorials are taken from The Washington Post. The editorials cover various important issues, ranging from politics, economy, law, society and culture to education, environment and sports. The present paper combines investigation from three aspects: the textual, syntactical, and rhetorical. The major findings presented in the thesis are as follows:(1) On the Textual Aspect: (a) The opening paragraphs of the English editorials usually adopt the deductive approach (76%), whereas the Chinese editorials prefer the inductive approach (92%). (b) The uses of the point of view are different. The third person is often applied in the English editorials (96%), whereas the first person, especially the first person plural, is extensively used (100%) in the Chinese editorials, (c) The argumentation of the English editorials is written in a fact-oriented way withexact figures, examples of experts or authority, and words of experts or even ordinary people. Whereas that of the Chinese editorials is written emotion-oriented with many modal verbs, words cited from great leaders, or using literary quotations and antitheses, (d) The conclusion paragraphs of the English editorials are usually written in summarization (100%), whereas the Chinese editorials are often concluded in encouragement (100%).(2) On the Syntactical Aspect: (a) The syntactic structure of the English editorials is characteristic of tree structure focusing on hypotaxis with tight logic; whereas that of the Chinese editorials is special for bamboo structure centering on the coordinate relation and the causal relation, (b) Passive sentences are commonly used in English writings. This feature is also well expressed here. In the English editorials, the passive sentences are widely used (33.26%), especially the syntactic passives (97.48%). Whereas in the Chinese editorials, passive sentences occur lower (9.02%), and the main is the notional passives (96.72%). (c) Imperative sentences occur fairly few in the English editorials (0.63%), whereas in the Chinese editorials, the imperative sentences are widely adopted (33.14%). (d) The echo-question sentences are often used in the English editorials (6.28%), whereas few echo-question sentences occur in the Chinese editorials (0.3%).(3) On the Rhetorical Aspect: the overall characteristics can be described as implicit and explicit description. The English editorials are usually structured to persuade their audience with argumentation and facts; whereas the Chinese editorials are employed to persuade their readerships with strong emotion and didactic teaching, (a) The English editorials are usually written in the synthetic expression, especially revealing complex ideas with affix, word transformations or compou...
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