A Comparative Study On Themes And Thematic Progression Patterns In ESTN And EEN

Nowadays, newspapers, television and internet are the main source from whichpeople can get information. As one of the most vital media of communication, newsreports have become an essential part in everyday life. It is an important way tocommunicate with the outside world, and we can get news in all manner of ways fromthe world in a short time. Although news reports become an inseparable part in dailylife, few researchers have made a comparative study of English Sci-Tech news reports(ESTN) and English Entertainment news reports (EEN) especially from the theory ofThematic Progression (TP). Therefore, it is necessary to study the discourse of newsreports from the perspective of comparison.One the one hand, based on the application of the Theme theory and Markednessconcept proposed by Halliday (2000), a comparative study on ESTN and EEN inTheme and Markedness are studied. On the other hand, scholar ZhuYongsheng’s(1985) Thematic Progression patterns are adopted to make a comparativestudy on ESTN and EEN. Based largely on the objectives of this research, threeresearch questions are discussed in the thesis:1. What are the distributioncharacteristics of Themes in ESTN and EEN?2. What are the distributioncharacteristics of Markedness in ESTN and EEN?3. What are the distributioncharacteristics of Thematic Progression in ESTN and EEN?In order to compare the Theme and TP pattern distributed in ESTN and EEN, theresearcher of the thesis has finally selected80samples—40Entertainment newsreports and40Sci-Tech news reports. All of them have similar textual length and arerandomly chosen from China Daily.After a thorough analysis with both qualitative and quantitative approaches, thestudy finds that there exist both similarities and differences in the employment ofTheme, Markedness and TP patterns in the two corpora. Similarities are listed asfollows:1. The Simple Theme is used more often in the ESTN and EEN;2.Unmarked Theme is dominant in ESTN and EEN;3. The Alternative patterns are notoften adopted in both ESTN and EEN. While differences are listed as follows:1. English Sci-Tech news reports employed much more Multiple Themes than that inEnglish Entertainment news reports while English Entertainment news reportsemployed much more Clausal Themes than that in English Sci-Tech news reports;2.Entertainment news reports adopt a little more Marked Themes than ESTN;3. InESTN, Continuous patterns are favored over the Same Theme ones, while in EEN, theSame Theme patterns are inclined to be preferred over Continuous ones. The resultsshow that there are some relationship between the thematic structure and the contentsof news reports. Through comparing the Theme, Markedness and ThematicProgression patterns of ESTN and EEN, news reports of different contents have theirpreferred Theme, Markedness and Thematic Progression patterns, and thecharacteristics of the two types of news reports are also explored. In the mean time,the reasons for similarities and differences of the Thematic Progression patterns inESTN and EEN are also found.The research is helpful for the learners to understand the discourse features ofEEN and ESTN. The author hopes that the findings of the thesis will help the studentsunderstand ESTN and EEN by offering them some insight into textual organizationfrom a top-down perspective and help them to develop their writing skills.