Analysis Of Speech Acts Of The People Involved In Disaster News Reports On Chinese And American News Websites

The present study examines speech acts performed in the disaster news reports from apragmatic perspective. The author collected over a thousand pieces of utterances by differentparticipants in the disaster news reports from Chinese and American news websites, such asChina Daily, New York Times, Xinhua Net, Washington Post and so on. The study intends toanalyze the speech acts from both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Examples of differentillocutionary acts and speech acts from the collected utterances are classified and analyzed underthe framework of Searle's speech acts theory and Van Dijk's theory of context model.In this thesis, the utterances recorded in the disaster news reports are considered as speechacts performed by various speakers. Based on the analysis of the collected data, the thesis findsthat participants in the disaster news reports perform speech acts in various ways when issuingspeeches. Guided by Searle's taxonomy, these utterances are grouped in terms of illocutionaryacts into different categories, namely, assertives, directives, commissives, expressives anddeclarations. These five types of illocutionary acts differ from each other in the frequency ofappearances. To be specific, the overwhelming majority of the utterances have the literalillocutionary acts of assertives while those with the illocutionary acts of declarations occur quiterarely in the context of the disaster news reports. Taking the directness of speech acts intoconsideration, it is found that, generally speaking, more direct speech acts are performed byspeakers than indirect speech acts in the disaster news reports.In the light of Van Dijk's theory of context, the thesis analyzes how context model, theparticipant's personalized interpretation of the relevant dimensions of the context, is influentialin the production of utterances and the preference in the choice of speech acts, taking intoconsideration the speakers vary in terms of identities and social and cultural backgrounds.Different groups of participants in the disaster news reports show both common and divergentpreferences with regard to the types and directness of speech acts they perform when issuingutterances. The categories constructed by the speakers in their subjective context models, such asthe speaker's social and political identity, relations between the speaker and the hearer, the shared knowledge, attitudes and beliefs, cultural backgrounds and so on, may control the natureand type of speech acts they perform.