An Analysis Of Nominalization In English Political News Report: A Systemic Functional Linguistics Perspective

According to systemic functional linguistics, nominalizing is the single most powerfulresource for creating grammatical metaphor (hereforth GM)(“Functional Grammar”352).Nominalization is considered as one of the major means for meaning generation andinterpretation. However, most of the studies for nominalization focused on scientific discourseor legislative reports. Very few of them concentrated on nominalization in news reports,especially in English political news reports (hereforth EPNR). As an important way to deliverinformation, political news reports are the basic approach for citizens to know nationalpolitical events and affairs. Large amounts of nominalization in political news reports reflectnot only the features of nominalization, but also the particularity of nominalization.Based on Halliday’s GM theory, this paper employs qualitative and quantitative methodsfor study. Twenty EPNRs from The New York Times are selected with the key words of ‘2012US presidential election. The purpose of this study is to describe the distribution ofnominalization and shift mechanism of nominalization in EPNRs. Firstly, the author tries todescribe transitivity system of nominalization in twenty selected EPNRs, including features ofprocesses and transferences between processes in these reports. Secondly, the author presentsthe mechanism of nominalization in EPNRs. They are shift of semantic function, grammaticalclass and grammatical function. Finally, the paper analyses three metafunctions ofnominalization in these EPNRs in relation to their nominalizations.It is found that the distribution of transference from Process to Entity enjoys the highestfrequency. In the aspect of grammatical class shift, nominalization from verbs accounts for thelargest number. As far as grammatical function is considered, transference from Epithet toThing predominates over other kinds of transference. In addition, ideational metafunction isembodied in lexical density, experience construction and descriptive potential. Interpersonalmetafunction makes EPNRs objective and reflects social status. Textual metafunction makesTheme-Rheme connection more natural and embodies information focus shifting.Through this study, it is believed that nominalization in EPNRs facilitated understandingof English news and gave insight for further nominalization studies.