A Study Of Discourse Organization Style Of China English

With the development of globalization and multi-culturalization, English isincreasingly being used as an international language. As a member of “WorldEnglishes”, China English has attracted more and more linguists’ attention andbecome an important topic both at home and abroad since it was first employed byGe Chuangui in1980. In a broad sense, China English refers to the variety ofEnglish widely used by the people who have Chinese as their native languageunder the Chinese cultural background. It presents the Chinese linguistic andcultural features and it can be accepted by people in other linguistic and culturalbackgrounds in intercultural communication. However, the research on discoursefeatures of China English is unsatisfying in the academic circles; it even stays inits initial stage.Features of discourse organization are largely decided by value orientationsand thought patterns which vary from culture to culture. And features of discourseorganization of China English are largely determined by its Chineseness, mainlyby characteristics of Chinese language and culture. Because of distinct Chineseculture and thought patterns which influence the discourse organization of ChinaEnglish, China English shows its marked differences from Normative English indiscourse organization style: indirect or inductive discourse organization style.Based on researches on discourse organization in intercultural communication,this thesis compares English compositions of Chinese university students withthose of American university students aiming at testifying that indirect discourseorganization style is the preference of China English. Although almost all culturespresent indirect and direct discourse organization styles, however, the degree ofpreference is different from culture to culture. The present research takes expository essays written by Chinese universitystudents as study subjects aiming to investigate the discourse organization style ofChina English. Scholars generally pay more attention to the official publication astheir materials in the study of China English, for example, China Daily. Whileuniversity student groups are usually ignored by scholars even though they have arelatively high level proficiency of English and thus can present somecharacteristics of China English. The author of the present thesis selects158and25expository essays respectively from Chinese and American university students’excellent model compositions. Furthermore, in terms of Chinese universitystudents’ model compositions, there are133expository essays written bynon-English major students and25by English major students. It is known thatexpository genre can best manifest one’s thought pattern in discourse organization.In this thesis, study objects are manually selected. As one main measure ofstudying China English, contrastive analysis plays an important role in this thesisto stand out the characteristics of China English and make our study result moreassertive.By this study, the author testifies that difference does exist between ChinaEnglish and Normative English represented by American English in terms of thepreference of discourse organization style. That is, indirectness is the generalpreference of China English in its discourse organization while directness is thegeneral preference of Normative English. Furthermore, because of the influence ofChinese thought patterns, value orientations and the traditional organization style,the Chinese, no matter how high their English proficiencies are, they somehowtend to prefer indirectness in discourse organization style of China English.By this study, the author hopes to offer some insights to fill the blank in the studies on China English. In addition, this thesis will help Chinese learners ofEnglish conduct intercultural communication with the awareness that differentEnglish varieties boast discourse features specific to their cultures. And it also willhelp the English native speakers better understand China English, Chinese cultureand Chinese thought patterns so as to make their intercultural communicationmore effective and successful.