A Comparative Study Of English Business News Composed By Chinese And Western Journalists From The Stylistic Perspective

The present thesis is designed to make a comparative study of the stylistic features of the English business news composed by Chinese journalists and native English speakers, and tries to make an explanation of the similarities and differences found in the two kinds of journalist English.With this aim in mind, the thesis selects 20 pieces of hard news covering the same business events as research samples from the outstanding state-level news media with the similar target readers, including China Daily, Global Times (the English edition), The New York Times, The Guardian and Reuters's reports. Through analyzing data with the help of the statistical tool—SPSS, both similarities and differences on stylistic features are found between English business news written by Chinese and native English-speaking journalists on the graphological, lexical, syntactic and textual levels.Through comparing the contextual factors of the sample news, it reveals that the differences between Chinese and native English-speaking journalists on the parts of linguistic competence, cultural backgrounds, and ways of thinking can well explain the reasons why there exist many differences on the stylistic features of the sample news reports. The field and mode of discourse in the thesis are quite similar, which can account for the reasons why the sample news reports bear some stylistic similarities.This study is necessary, since the previous researches on journalistic English mostly only take news reports written by the English natives as examples. Rare works are dedicated to compare the stylistic features of English business news written by speakers of ESL/EFL and English natives. The findings of the thesis can help ESL/EFL learners in China, especially the Chinese journalists, take into consideration the language habits and thought patterns of their target readers when they are writing articles, in a bid to make what they write more idiomatic. Moreover, it also contributes to the study of the features of Chinglish and the second language acquisition.