A Contrastive Study Of Cohesive Devices Between Wei Cheng And Its English Version

In this thesis, the author takes Qian Zhongshu’s Wei Cheng and its Englishtranslation version Fortress Besieged which translated by Jennie Kelly and MaoGuoquan as contrast corpus, Halliday and Hasan’s discourse cohesion theory as thetheoretical basis. The author also uses both quantitative and qualitative analysis methodsto compare the similarities and differences between Chinese and English five cohesivedevices, in order to find the details on the differences between Chinese and Englishcohesive devices and explore the reasons for the final conclusion which can services fortranslation and teaching.The thesis is divided into four chapters: introduction, literature review, the body ofthe thesis and conclusion.Chapter1is an introduction; it describes the background of this research and itsimportance, and compares this thesis with previous studies in innovation and corpuschoice.Chapter2is an overview of the discourse cohesion theory; it is the theoretical basisof this thesis. This chapter describes the main theoretical basis-Halliday and Hasan’scohesion theory. According to a logical sequence from the discourse cohesion tocohesive devices then cohesion in English and Chinese, this chapter introduced the maincontent and the development of cohesion theory.Chapter3is a contrast between Chinese and English cohesive devices on thecorpus and the body this thesis. According to Halliday and Hason’s classification ofcohesive device, this part is divided into reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunctionand lexical cohesion five parts, and uses the quantitative and qualitative analysismethods to compare Chinese and English cohesive devices in detail. Quantitativeanalysis of which covers the entire chapter1, chapter4and chapter5of the corpus,qualitative analysis uses60groups of sentences.Chapter4is the conclusion; this part summarizes the above and concludes thegeneral differences of Chinese and English cohesive devices in balanced distribution,explicitness and implicitness, and the normative, as well as differences of each abovecohesive device in detail. And through the conclusion, the author explores the reasonsfor the differences from the language itself and ways of thinking.Limitations of this paper are for lacking of innovation in theory, and imperfect incontent. Being aware of these deficiencies, the author necessarily needs to start thefurther research from two aspects; deepening personal theoretical knowledge, morecomprehensive analysis of the corpus and the wider aspects do quantitative analysis, inorder to make more innovation and make the conclusion more scientific and credible.