A Contrastive Study Of Objectivity Between English And Chinese Economic News

The present study mainly concerns the objective linguistic features at clausal and lexis levels of both English and Chinese economic news reports. Halliday's Systemic-Functional Grammar serves as the main theoretical tool in this study with the assistance of Appraisal theory. Through the Contrastive study, some linguistic similarities and differences in constructing objective news of both languages are revealed. The data for analysis in the present study are from an English newspaper Financial Times and a Chinese newspaper Economic Reference (Jing Ji Can Kao Bao) published from November to December 2007. Altogether 60 pieces of news are collected with Chinese and English 30 pieces respectively.The analysis is mainly conducted under Ideational Function and Interpersonal Function. Under these two functions, the transitivity systems of the news, the modality and evaluative lexis of the news are analyzed. The Contrastive study shows that there are some similarities and differences between Chinese and English economic news in terms of objective linguistic features, with similarities prevailing. At clausal level, verbal and material processes exceed other processes. The participants in those processes also show similar features. The Sayers in verbal processes tend to be authorities or organizations while the Actors in material processes are usually relevant parties of the reported event. Ideational metaphors also serve as an important tool to construct objective news in both languages. At lexis level, modality and evaluative lexis take little percentage in economic news of both languages. Besides, the modal value of the few modal words applied by the journalists is relatively low, which can be considered as a very important strategy to produce objective news reports. Meanwhile, the extensive use of figures and the employment of vague language such as almost and nearly before the figures in economic news also contributes a lot to its objectivity. This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One is a general introduction of the background of the present study and the definition of objectivity is also illustrated in this chapter. Chapter Two briefly reviews the relevant literature about the linguistic studies of news discourses. The third chapter constructs the theoretical framework for the present study and manifests the applicability of the theories. Chapter Four is the main body of analysis. In this chapter, detailed analysis of transitivity systems of news, modality and evaluative lexis is conducted. Chapter Five comes to the conclusion and points out the significance and limitations of the present study, in hope that further studies will be made by more scholars. It is hoped that this study will shed light on economic news writing and understanding and help readers realize subtle ideological influences when reading newspapers.