A Research On News Lead From Linguistic Perspective

Traditional researches on news lead are mostly conducted from grammatologic and rhetorical perspectives, fewer ones are done from linguistic point of view. Thus, this text is trying to analyze the news lead from linguistic perspective in a plain way. The whole thesis is divided into five chapters:Part 1: introduction. This chapter mainly presents current definition of the news lead, exsiting situation of research and the evaluation, propositional meaning and research methods.There are three views about the definition of the news lead as follows: 1, gives the most important, the most essential and the most elemental core truth, reveals the subject idiology of the news.2, the lead only informs the readers the facts in which they are most interested .3,"eat your cake and have it", gives attention to both. This view advocates that the lead should be both informative and attractive. The above three viewpoints all have their own merits and shortcomings. I think the most comprehensive understanding should be the one from Beijing Radio Institute:"the lead is the first sentence or paragraph of the new, express the main or the freshes facts in plain word and to the point, at the same time reveals the subject idiology and attract the recipients'attention and interest.The current researches on news lead can be generally classified into the following three areas: first, studies from grammatologic perspective. Second, from traditional rhetorical perspective. At last, from linguistic perspective. Nowadays, most of the researches on the news lead are about the thing-in-itself, the ones conducted from linguistic point of view are relatively weak. We should combine the theories from journalism and linguistics, then analyze, study form a new perspective.This text is trying to reexamine the news lead from the linguistic perspective, regarding the news lead as a special verbal phenomenon. By classifying, generalizing and summerizing massive coupus, I want to display the characteristics and the rules of the news lead for the purpose of comprehending, understanding and using language better. Besides, I also want to make the recipients know the news lead better, with the news more vivid and precise.The second part introduces the functions of the news lead. It mainly has three functions: 1, information function. Reveal the theme and project the core. The paper lead reflects the core and essence of the information in concise words, tells the readers the freshest, the most substaintial and the most meaningful stuff in order to reveal the theme, project the core and determine the keynote of the report. 2, fasinating the readers to go on. In term of purpose, the lead is the bait to draw the readers to go ahead. When people finally select one paper or magazine, they could stop reading at any time because the news is time-consuming or boring due to writing problems. Only the intresting information can capture the readers'attention. The readers have decided whether to go on or not at the first sight of the headline and the lead. Only the vivid, intresting, concise and fresh headlines and leads can attract the readers and lead them to the body part. 3, the discourse function. This part introduce the linkage function, namely, the lead plays an important role as the link in the obpyramidal structure; explanation and generalization function, namely, the lead is not only the further explanation of the headline but also the generalization of the theme of the whole paper; subject joint function, namely in news discourse, the subjects should be joined together due to the lilmitation of its macrostructure, they first constitute the various local structures and microstatements, then are joined together to make a integrated discourse.Part three analyses the elements which constitute the lead's semantic meaning and the selection of them. An integral news lead should semanticly include space, time, role, event, cause and result elements. The news lead which consists of all six elements has played a huge role in news report for a long time, and its historial status and importance can not be ignored. However, in the long term of practice in news, the pressmen gradually realize that such leads have serious shortcomings, namely, the focal point is vague, the lead is verbose which is to the disadvantage of unrolling and developing of the news body and fails to meet the requirement of fastness and conciseness of the highly develped news era. Thus, we need to study and analyse the choice of the semantic elements. By the analysis of cases, here is the conclusion: in the ordinary course of events, the role and event elements are the indispensable ones, the left ones are not necessary.Part four analyses the way to realize the news lead. First, analyse the syntactic characteristics, namely short sentences are used more than long sentences. Trying to use short sentences is one major syntactic feature of the news leads. The news characteristics determine that the leads should use concise and fresh short sentences rather than the complicated long ones; use declarative sentences rather than imperative or interjectional sentences. The main aim of the news lead is to pass information, unlike the literary works, it is not necessary to create artistic conception, nor to express heartfelt feelings, or to get people to imagine. It only needs to give the readers the required information in a concise and plain way. The news lead often uses declarative sentences rather than the imperative or interjectional sentences which have strong emotional effects. Second, it analyses the syntactic characteristics of the lead which is to get the news point as fast as possible. Thus, the optimal one is : the subject+predicate+object. At last, it analyses the rhetorical devices of the news lead. Give examples from comparison, metaphor, flipchip and personification.The last part of the thesis is conclusion. This part sum up the brief features described in the whole article, and points out the shortcomings and deficiencies.