Comparing Rhetorical Functions Of Metadiscourse In Radio News And Television News

News has been trying to remain objective and using neutral language on the delivery of information. At the same time, it tries to present news-workers’ opinions and perspectives of great diversity on the events and issues under discussion. As two different types of audience-oriented news, radio news and television news are different in their writing style and transmission medium. Thus hypothesis can be made about difference in their ways of delivering news through news-workers, and among the various ways of engaging and persuading audiences, metadiscourse weighs heavily in news-workers’rhetorical strategies.Metadiscourse, as a bridge facilitating interaction between authors and readers, serves to not only assure readers’understanding and acceptance of discourses’ propositional contents, but also show authors’indication and presentation of their values, interests and ideology corresponding to their communities through discourses. Thus, the relationship between metadiscourse and rhetoric deserves sufficient attention in studying news discourse. The comparison of metadiscourse use in different news types may contribute to explain different relationships and patterns of author-reader/listener interaction in different discourse genres.With an analysis with both quantitative study and qualitative study, the thesis was to explore the similarities and/or differences between radio news and television news in their use of metadiscourse to achieve rhetoric function in news delivery. Thirty radio news transcripts from NPR (National Public Radio) and thirty television news transcripts from CNN (Cable News Network) were selected for data collection and descriptive analysis of their metadiscourse use and the ways metadiscourse realizing rhetorical elements "pathos","ethos", and "logos" in the news discourse.It was found that the general differences between the frequencies of metadiscourse markers in the two news languages were not obvious, but they both accounted more interactional markers than interactive markers. It was also found that among the sub-categories of metadiscourse markers, certain features existed in radio news and television news, including both similarities and differences.The study indicates that in the process of exhibiting objective facts about the developing world as well as conveying subjective opinions for the sake of newsroom ideology, news-workers have employed the descriptive and explanatory power of metadiscourse together with persuasive strategies to convince audiences of what they say:to create affective appeals of "pathos," metadiscourse is used by news-workers to predict and satisfy audiences’ needs for understanding; to establish credibility appeals of "ethos," metadiscourse serves to set a trustworthy persona for news-workers themselves and permeate newsroom culture and ideology; and to address rational appeals of "logos," metadiscourse is to transmit information corresponding to news values and news styles. In the rhetoric of news production and delivery, metadiscourse not only facilitates news-workers’organizing news information in ways audiences are likely to find coherent and convincing, but also helps news-workers engage audiences and project their opinions in ways audiences are likely to find befitting and affective.