A Cross-Cultural Study Of English News Reports Organization Paradigms As Regulated By Thought Patterns

News report, as a special type of writing by which people get the latest information all over the world, plays an important role in the modern society. Prompted by the reform and opening-up policy of China, English-language newspapers have developed rapidly over the past two decades. They acquired a great achievement in both circulation and influential power. Serving as the window of China, English-language newspapers help to promote communication and understanding with foreign countries, and have turned to be the major media that influence the Western readers.But when comparing news reports written by native English-speaking journalists with those by Chinese journalists, differences in writing styles especially in discourse organizations are observed though they are reporting the same news events. Rooted in two different cultures and language systems, Chinese and Western thought patterns have a lot of differences, which greatly influence the writing of news reports. This thesis draws heavily on theories about different Chinese and Western thought patterns, and then puts forward three hypotheses. Based on the Chinese and Westerners different preferences on synthesis and analysis thought patterns, the first and second hypotheses concerning their impacts on the writing style of leads and the proportion of background information in English news reports are proposed. Based on different preference on induction and deduction thought patterns, the author put forward the third hypothesis about the arrangement of theme summary in news reports. Samples are selected respectively from China Daily and the New York Times, 60 articles in total and both qualitative and quantitative analysis are used to testify the three hypotheses. Relationship between cultural thinking patterns and the ways Eastern and Western journalists organize their English news reports are analyzed.