A Contrastive Study On Thematic Progression Patterns Of English And Chinese Economic News Report

The thesis makes a contrastive study of thematic progression (TP) patterns between English and Chinese economic news report. It aims at finding out similar and different choices of TP patterns adopted in English and Chinese economic news report, and examining the underlying factors contributing to the similar and different choices of TP patterns. Halliday’s theme theory and Danes’thematic progression theory are the theoretical framework of the thesis.Based on TP patterns proposed by the scholars, home and abroad, a model of analysis for the thesis is achieved, including such six TP patterns as Parallel, Continuous, Alternative. Derivative, Concentrated and Non-specific TP pattern. The corpus is composed of five Chinese and five English economic news reports, which are selected randomly from some influential business newspapers and websites. The English economic news reports are selected from Financial Post and Washington Post. Chinese economic news reports are chosen from Chinese Economic Report, China Business and Xinhua Net.The major findings include four aspects as below:First, concentrated and continuous progression patterns are the ones which are dominantly adopted. The frequency sequence of TP patterns in English economic news report goes as continuous>concentrated> alternative> parallel> derivative> non-specific, while in Chinese economic news report the sequence is concentrated> continuous> parallel> alternative> non-specific> derivative.Second, there are more elliptical themes in Chinese economic news reports than in English economic news reports.Third, the dominant pattern in Chinese economic news report is concentrated progression pattern while the continuous progression pattern occurs most frequently in English economic news report. In English economic news report, alternative progression pattern occupies higher proportion than parallel progression pattern. However, in Chinese economic news report, the sequence is reversed.Fourth, there are more non-specific progression patterns in Chinese economic news reports than in English economic news reports.How the similar and different choices of TP patterns in Chinese and English economic news report occur can be explained in such three aspects as communicative functions, linguistic features, and ways of thinking.Economic news reports function to offer information, so concentrated and continuous TP patterns are most frequently used. This accounts for the similar choices of TP patterns. As Chinese is a paratactic language and has a loose sentence structure, it accounts for the frequent ellipsis of themes. Chinese people tend to think in a spiral way, emphasizing images and meaning rather than logic; while western people prefer a linear way with logic. Therefore, Chinese language tends to adopt more concentrated TP patterns and English language tends to adopt more continous TP patterns to construct texts.These findings can inspire some implications. The contrastive study will help to further understand the different cultures and ways of thinking between China and western countries. Besides, the study will better facilitate the teaching and writing of economic news report as well as translation of texts.Moreover, as thematic progression is an effective device to construct texts, it is helpful to learn how it works in the texts in order for the readers to better understand the texts.