A Comparative Study On Themes And Thematic Progression Patterns In English And Chinese Fables

Theme and thematic progression (TP) are two main means indiscourse analysis. Different TP patterns will help readers understand thelogic and organization of the information in a text. There are researcheson themes and TP patterns of different genres, such as advertisements,news reports, business contracts, academic papers and so on, but those onfables are rare. Fables are not only educational books for children but alsoguidelines of life, and they are precious cultural heritages of the world. Sothis thesis intends to conduct a comparative analysis of English andChinese fables by focusing on themes and the corresponding TP patternsbased on Halliday’s functional grammar (2004).The corpus consists of30English fables and30Chinese fables,which are chosen from two representative collections of western andChinese fables—Aesop’s Fables and Ancient Chinese Fables respectively.Both quantitative and qualitative methods are adopted in the analysis.The results show that there are similarities as well as differences inthemes and TP patterns between English and Chinese fables. In terms ofthemes, both of them favor unmarked themes and simple themes; as forTP patterns, it is found that seven patterns frequently appear in fables.Both English and Chinese fables prefer constant theme patterns and linearpatterns. However, they still differ in frequency. The similarities are decided by the factors of genre and reader, and the differences areinfluenced by different language structures and cultures.This study is helpful for the translation and promotion of Chineseand foreign literature works. In addition, the TP patterns in this thesis canbe applied to literature and translation teaching, which may improvestudents’ understanding of language features and ways of expression inEnglish and Chinese fables.