A Study Of Themes On News Reports From Business Week-Based On The Theme Theory

As a unique genre, news report arouses increasing attention both in media mass and in academic field. In particular, when the theme theory is prosperous, many scholars began to throw their light on the analysis of news. Therefore, this thesis attempts to study the theme characteristics of news reports.A detailed analysis of theme function (that is experiential theme, interpersonal theme and textual theme), complexity (that refers to simple theme, multiple theme and clausal theme) and markedness (that means unmarked theme and marked theme) is conducted in this thesis based on the theme theory of Halliday. In this thesis,40 pieces of news reports are collected from Business Week with releasing date ranging from Nov.5,2010 to Dec.14,2010 as the research subject. After analyzing and labeling the collected materials manually, the data is obtained by the statistical tool AntConc. Thus, the theme function, complexity and markedness are discussed according to the data.The results show experiential theme accounts for the majority, followed by textual theme and interpersonal theme. Among experiential theme, participant is most frequently used, while process is least used. The percentage of conjunction as textual theme is high, while interpersonal theme tends to employ modal comment adjunct to express personal feelings. In terms of complexity, the simple theme takes up the largest proportion, while the clausal theme is least in amount with time and condition adverbial clause as majority. For multiple theme, the order of textual^experiential occurs more often. For markedness, unmarked theme appears more often than marked theme which usually occurs in the form of location circumstantial.It is hoped that this thesis with regard to news reports can enlarge the application of theme theory. Besides, it should be beneficial to the understanding and edition of news reports.