A Contrastive Study Of Demonstrative Reference In English And Chinese Film Dialogues

Nowadays, valid cultural communication is playing a more and moreimportant role in the social development. It could not only deepen themutual understanding among peoples from home and abroad, but alsopromote the economic growth. Since most people can not afford a visitabroad to experience the foreign culture in person, watching films hasbecome one of the most popular ways for them to gain a generaloverview of foreign culture. According to official statistics in2011, theoverall box-office profits of films in China reached13.15billion yuan,with more than twenty American films taking up thirty-seven percent,namely, around4.91billion yuan. In Feb,2012, the new biliteral tradeprotocol was approved that each year in the future there would befourteen more American films introduced into China. However, mostChinese audience do not master English and so need to rely on thetranslation to comprehend the original film dialogues. Under suchcircumstances, the translation of film dialogues is becoming a more andmore important field. To ensure the Chinese audience to have a good understanding of English film dialogues, various linguistic cohesivedevices need to be adopted in translation. Demonstrative reference is oneof the most frequently adopted cohesive devices.In the thesis, the author will make a contrastive analysis ofdemonstrative reference between English and Chinese film dialogues onthe basis of Halliday and Hasan’s demonstrative reference system. Theresearch data involved in the present study include the English film Prideand Prejudice and its Chinese translation, the Chinese film Fei Cheng WuRao and its English translation. They are analyzed by means of thequantitative and qualitative research methods in a descriptive way.In Halliday and Hasan’s demonstrative reference system, thedemonstratives are classified into the selective nominal demonstratives,the adverbial demonstratives, and the non-selective demonstrative.Specifically, the English selective nominal demonstratives include this,these, that and those; the Chinese ones include这,这些,那and那些.The English adverbial demonstratives contain here, there, now and then; the Chinese ones contain这儿,那儿,这时and那时. The non-selectivedemonstrative in English is the while there is no counterpart of it inChinese. The present study aims to describe their major similarities anddifferences between English and Chinese film dialogues from theperspective of textual cohesion, which are summarized as follows.As far as the author has investigated in the present research, theirsimilarities mainly lie in the following aspects. Firstly, this and这canboth refer exophorically, anaphorically or cataphorically to someparticular person or object mentioned by the speaker. Generally speaking,their referent items are physically or psychologically near the speaker.These and这些act in the same way as this and这. Secondly, that and那make exophoric or anaphoric reference to some particular person orobject mentioned by the interlocutor. Their referents are generally notnear the speaker. Those and那些perform the same textual function asthat and那. Thirdly, here and这儿can imply the spacial or textualproximity to the speaker; there and那儿can imply the spacial distance from the speaker. Textually speaking, the former can be used in exophora,anaphora and cataphora, while the latter can only function in exophoraand anaphora. Fourthly, now and这时can be used to indicate temporalproximity of some event or activity to the speaker, while then and那时can be employed to indicate temporal distance from the speaker. Thesetwo pairs can make exophoric and anaphoric references on mostoccasions.The differences of demonstrative reference between English andChinese film dialogues are illustrated in the following aspects. Firstly, inEnglish, the distal demonstrative that is usually adopted to referanaphorically to what the speaker or interlocutor has just said to make acomment on it, while in the similar situations the proximal demonstrative这is adopted in Chinese. Secondly, when the distal demonstrative that inEnglish is used to refer anaphorically to the speaker’s or the interlocutor’sremarks, Chinese often employs such cohesive devices as ellipsis,repetition and substitution to express the same meaning. Thirdly, inEnglish, the personal pronoun it can refer anaphorically to any identifiable part of the preceding text, which may be a fact, an activity, ora statement. Comparatively, Chinese frequently adopts the proximaldemonstrative这to perform the same textual function. Fourthly, theEnglish adverbial demonstratives here and there can be used to referanaphorically to what the interlocutor has just said. However, theirChinese equivalents这儿and那儿can not carry out this textualfunction. Fifthly, the biggest difference lies in that in English there is aneutral non-selective demonstrative the while in Chinese there is noequivalent to the in English. The in English can contribute to theexophoric, anaphoric and cataphoric references. In contrast, thecorresponding means adopted in Chinese include the demonstrativereference by这,这些,那and那些, and zero reference by zero forms.The possible reasons for these differences may be attributed to thefollowing two aspects. Firstly, English is a hypotactic language that paysmore attention to the structural integrity and explicit cohesion whileChinese is a paratactic language that lays more stress on logical meaningand implicit coherence. Secondly, the adoption of demonstratives in Chinese is influenced by the physical or psychological distance betweenthe speaker and the referent to a greater degree than that in English.