The Contrastive Analysis Of Cohesive Devices In English And Chinese Oratorical Texts

Cohesion is one of the key theories in linguistics. Halliday and Hasan's cohesion theory, one of the most representative theories in this field, makes an elaborate introduction and has aroused plenty of linguists' interest in this area.In China, some linguists have made the contrastive analysis about the differences and similarities of cohesive devices between English and Chinese texts. However,these researches are mainly based on the analysis of literary works. Beyond that, these researches mostly only adopt qualitative analysis, lacking of the support of data. This thesis is based on Halliday and Hasan's cohesion theory and adopts the quantitative and qualitative analysis to analyze the oratorical texts which are compact and concise,aiming to find the differences and similarities of cohesive devices between English and Chinese.The data used for the research is restricted to American and Chinese leaders' oratorical texts. For the accuracy and scientificity of the study, all of the samples must meet the following three requirements: American and Chinese main leaders' orations;same or similar topic of each pair; similar amount of words of English and Chinese samples. After tough and time-consuming process, the author got 22 oratorical texts(11 English texts and 11 Chinese texts with the amount words is 15702 and 17173 respectively.) that can meet the above requirements. After that, the author made analysis about the collected samples. Firstly, all cohesive devices are collected according to Halliday and Hasan's cohesion theory. Secondly, the author makes the elaborate analysis about the differences and similarities of cohesive devices between English and Chinese oratorical texts and the underlying reasons. Lastly, implications of the research in English writing and translating teaching are discussed shortly.Through contrastive analysis, the author finds some prominent similarities:(1)With regard to personal reference, both number of the the first and second personal reference is more than that of the third personal reference.(2)About demonstrative reference, the number of “this/?” is more than “that/?” in both English and Chineseoratorical texts.(3)Compared with other cohesive devices, the number of substitution is least, however, it is opposite about lexical cohesion. The main differences are as follows:(1)As for personal reference, the number of English samples are more than that of Chinese samples.(2)About ellipsis, it is much more in Chinese than in English.A lot of sentences without subjects could be found in Chinese texts.(3)With regard to extension of conjunction, it is more used in English than that of Chinese.Meanwhile, the author explains some reasons for these differences and similarities from perspectives of different language systems and thinking pattern.Without doubt, there are really some limitations about the present thesis, such as the small corpora and brief analysis about less remarkable cohesive devices. Anyway, it is a significant process that the thesis applies the combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis into the contrastive analysis of cohesive devices. And the author believes that the present study will contribute to a preparatory basis for more scientific and comprehensive researches in this field.