Systemic-functional Grammar Under The Guidance Of The News Discourse Analysis

This thesis aims at a functional analysis of news reports and editorials. Guided by M.A.K.Halliday's systemic functional approach, especially based on his three Metafunctions—Ideational Function, Interpersonal Function and Textual Function, with 6 news reports and 6 editorials as the objects, the thesis investigates the micro-structural features of the two news sub-styles and the functional differences between them from the angle of discourse genre. The analysis makes it clear that reports and editorials do have something in common, both of them hae material processes as their largest components, and there is no possession of behavioral process, while the former genre has a larger percent of verbal process and the latter one boasts a much larger percentage of relational process and mental process. In addition, modal verbs, mood adjuncts, comment adjuncts and appraisable words in both reports and editorials can realize meaning potential of a speaker who acts as an attendee, but editorials have relatively more words which convey interpersonal relationship. Furthermore, both of the news reports and editorials have dominant textual themes and simple linear thematic progression. The analysis on two news sub-styles helps to understand the choice of news language and the function it realizes, which leads to a better comprehension and a thorough grasp of the news characters.