Contrastive Analysis Of Coherence Strategies In English Economic Editorial Discourse Between NS And NNS

There has been relatively little examination of comparative analysis of coherence strategies between native speakers of English (NS) and nonnative speakers of English (NNS) in naturally occurring English newspaper editorial discourses. This comparative study of newspaper editorials written by NS and NNS aims at examining whether and to what extent the use frequencies of relations and textual rhetorical structures preferred by native English speakers different from those preferred by Chinese nonnative speakers when constructing coherent newspaper editorials in English. And then the author analyzes the reasons.The data comprises a total of 10 editorials selected from two kinds of newspapers for the study: Financial Times and China Daily. By using Mann and Thompson's (1988) Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST), qualitative and quantitative analysis were conducted to examine whether there were any significant micro-textual and macro-structural variations from one culture to another within the same genre of the editorial.Discourse analysis is often indentified with the notion of coherence and cohesion. Coherence is represented at different levels of linguistic structure, so scholars use various research methods to study it from the different levels of language. According to Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST), the textual coherence can be explained in terms of relations between sentences or paragraphs. The present study researches the coherence from the aspect of use frequency of relations and text-level structure.The results reveal that the English editorials written by Chinese writers show specific similarities to those by the English native writers, such as the higher frequencies of joint relation, evidence relation, interpretation relation, antithesis relation, evaluation relation and concession relation than other relations. According to Mann and Thompson's RST, this is mainly due to the fact that their intended effects are to increase the readers' willingness to accept the writers'expression of some opinions and persuade the readers to believe and accept them. The effects are in accordance with the functions of editorials.However, English newspaper editorials written by Chinese writers and NS have rather different rhetorical structures although they share the same purpose of communication. Evidence relation in Editorials from Financial Times appears more frequently than those from China Daily, while editorials from China Daily use more antithesis relation, condition relation, evaluation relation and solution-hood relation. This is probably due to two factors: the transfer of inherently different writing traditions and the different expectations of readers from the two cultures. In the Chinese NNS'editorials, writers prefer the way of theory-based argumentation while in the NS'editorials, they prefer the way of fact-based argumentation. The author also finds that there exist significant differences in the motivation of paragraph division. Most of the Chinese writers are keen on feeling-driven paragraph division while English native writers prefer logic-driven paragraph division.The thesis contributes to RST by applying it to explore and compare the different coherence strategies adopted by NS and NNS when compiling the newspaper economic editorials. At the same time, the paper concludes with some brief reflections on pedagogic implications. This study would help the readers identify these coherence strategies so as to come to a better understanding of the text, and also guide the writers to write this kind of genre more natively with the purpose of enhancing intercultural communication.