A Study Of The Realization Of Tenor In English Economic News Discourse

It is economic news reports that become a vital channel for the public to know world economy. The journalists persuade the target listeners to accept their opinions or judgments to achieve the communicative purposes by providing objective economic information to the target listeners in economic news reports.Scholars at home and abroad mainly focus on the theoretical research of tenor and few researches have been carried out on the application of tenor. Although news discourse has been explored from the perspective of three metafunctions in systemic functional grammar, the study of news discourse, especially economic news discourse, is far from enough in terms of tenor.On the basis of the theoretical framework of tenor, this thesis attempts to analyze the realization of tenor in English economic news reports from four aspects:mood, modality, person and interpersonal metaphors. In this thesis, twenty pieces of VOA economic news reports from January 1,2008 to September 30, 2010 are selected at random. Both quantitative and qualitative analytical methods are adopted in this thesis to analyze all the samples.Through analyzing the realization of tenor in English economic news reports, this thesis comes to the following conclusions:From the perspective of the mood, it can be summarized that the authoritative subjects shows the authority, authenticity and reliability of economic news reports, which then realize the status in social tenor and desirability in interactional tenor. The past tense, present tense and future tense can be adopted to show the objectivity and authenticity, timeliness and predictability of economic news reports, which make contributions to the realization of interactional tenor. Declaratives, interrogatives and imperatives show the objectivity, authenticity, practicability, acceptability and authority of economic news reports, which is helpful to realize status and contact in social tenor and interactional tenor.From the angle of modality, the expressions of modalization reflect the objectivity, authenticity and acceptability of the economic news reports, which is conductive to realize desirability in interactional tenor. The expressions of modulation indicating the authority and objectivity of economic news reports are conductive to realize status in social tenor and desirability in interactional tenor.From the aspect of person, the personal pronouns can achieve the truthfulness, acceptability and authority of English economic news reports, which contribute to the realization of status and contact in social tenor and the desirability in interactional tenor.In terms of interpersonal metaphors, the status and contact in social tenor and interactional tenor is realized by adopting the metaphors of mood to manifest acceptability and authority. Metaphors of modality can show the authenticity, objectivity and acceptability of English economic news reports, which is an effective way to realize affect in social tenor and desirability in interactional tenor.The present study makes an attempt to realize two objectives:theoretically, it tries to enrich register theory, especially tenor; practically, it tries to broaden the application of tenor and provide a research perspective to study economic news discourse. In addition, the author hopes that the present study can be instructive and meaningful to economic news writing, to the improvement of economic news listening and to the establishment of a good and trustful interpersonal relationship between the journalists and the target listeners.