The Comparative Analysis Of Parody In Chinese And English Popular Catchphrases In Terms Of Textual Metafunction

Parody in Chinese and English popular catchphrases reflects the objective world as amirror and the outlooks and values of social groups. This thesis mainly explains parody inlight of Halliday’s textual metafunction and compares the original and parodic texts in bothChinese and English popular catchphrases.In light of information system, the information structures of the original and parodictexts form a dual-or-multi-dimensional one, macro information structure and microinformation structure. The information structures of original texts chiefly present theinformation in cultural and situational contexts, while parodic text, in the situational andco-text. In Chinese parodic popular catchphrases, parody below clause is presented byhomophonemes or similar phonemes with different characters, while in English, the repeatedmorphemes are important resource to function as Given information to make Newinformation prominent. And in the clause, Chinese and English popular catchphrases share thesame syntax or collocation as Given information; and parodic words and phrases are alwaystreated as New information to provide topics. Above clause, parody in Chinese and Englishpopular catchphrases exists in tunes and styles. The parodic tune is not close to original one,mainly through rhymes and marked conjunctions to distinguish Given information from Newinformation. And from the angle of information distribution, it is not stable; parody is flexibleand variable in increasing meaning potential. And from the aspect of information focus, thereare lexical and syntactic focuses in Chinese and English popular catchphrases. However, theyare of distinctive lexical focus methods. Chinese chiefly relies on phonemes and morphemes,while English on the inflectional and derivational morphemes.Thematically speaking, parody is mostly employed in clauses and texts. However, due tothe feature of grammatical metaphor of parody, the parodic morphemes/phonemes andphrases are of the features of phrases and clause: the parodic words are the condensed clauses.And so is the parodic phrases, they are the condensed clauses. The specially marked thematicstructure would exist: in most cases, Theme is elliptical or embedded into Rheme. As to theChinese and English parodic popular texts, parody makes the original texts embed into theparodic texts to provide background information and New Topic in situational context whileRheme gives statements and comments. In view of thematic progression, the elements whichare embedded into the original text are regarded as Theme as well, while Rheme of parodictext does not only serve New Topic for statements and comments but also form informationFocus by comparing Rheme in original text. In terms of cohesion, parody itself is a kind of cohesive method. However, in Englishpopular catchphrases, parody is primely for clauses and texts, and in Chinese, it can happen inany stratification of grammar. Yet the parodic word formation also makes a contribution to thetextual metafunction. The parodic words are the package of phrases or clause, so it plays apart in transition. In Chinese, lexical devices are often applied in the stratifications under theclause: in parodic catchwords, synonymy morphemes, antonymy morphemes, homophonemesand similar phonemes with different characters are used; in parodic catchphrases, repetitionand collocation are employed; in parodic clauses, the repetition and substitution of syntax andconjunctions; and in parodic texts, all the devices mentioned above are used. While in English,parodic word formation almost relies on the morphemes; as for parodic clauses on thecollocated syntax; parodic texts, all devices mentioned are used as well.