English Focus Performance Means Research

The functional grammar school assumes that the world can be divided into information units. Accordingly, the functional grammar school considers language as a complete information system and linguistic communication as a process of information movement. In the process of information movement, communicative parties always intend to give prominence to their main points, that is to say, information focus. Almost every sentence has an information focus.This paper briefs research findings that overseas and domestic scholars made in terms of fundamental issues on theories of information focus, such as definition of information focus, type of information focus, principle of information focus. At the same time, personal suggestions and views are added to this paper on the basis of it. In the process of linguisticcommunication, people are accustomed to marking their main points------information focus in one way or another. We call the way which is used to mark main points focusing device.The focusing devices are of three types: 1)phonological; 2)lexical; 3)grammatical. In oral English, information focus can primarily be achieved by phonological focusing device. While lexical and grammatical focusing devices are widely used in written English.This paper makes a study of the interrelationship between pragmatic presupposition and information focus. To some extent, pragmatic presupposition has an influence on the choice and placement of information focus. That is, information focus varies with pragmatic presupposition.