A Comparative Study On Themes And Thematic Progression Patterns Of English Sports News Reports In Newspapers And On The Radio

The choice of Theme plays a fundamental part in the way discourse is organized,and the thematic progression pattern reflects the way Themes interact with Rhemes in order to provide continuity in discourse.Nowadays sports play a significant role in the country’s economy and people’s cultural life,and sports news has become an important factor in enhancing the circulation and popularity of newspapers and radio programs.Therefore,the study of sports news in terms of Themes and thematic progression patterns are worthy of much attention and effort in research.The present thesis is a comparative study,which aims at exploring and explaining the similarities and differences in the distributions of Themes and thematic progression patterns of sports news reports in newspapers and on the radio.For this purpose,two corpora are built,both of which consist of 16 sports news reports respectively collected from the New York Times and the National Public Radio.The theoretical framework for this study is established based on Halliday’s Theme/Rheme theory(Halliday & Matthiessen,2004),Thompson’s analysis unit of Theme(Thompson,2008),Dane?’ thematic progression theory(Dane?,1974)and Zhu Yongsheng’ model of four progression patterns(Zhu Yongsheng,1995).Both qualitative and quantitative methods are employed in this study.In order to fulfill the research purpose,the present study is to answer the three questions:1.What are the distributions of Themes used in English sports news reports in newspapers and on the radio?2.What are the distributions of thematic progression patterns employed in English sports news reports in newspapers and on the radio?3.What are the underlying factors accounting for the similarities and differences of the distributions of Themes and thematic progression patterns in English sports news reports found in newspapers and on the radio?Through a statistical analysis and a discussion on the similarities and differences in the distributions of Themes and thematic progression patterns in the two corpora,the major findings are summarized as follows:In terms of the distributions of Themes,relatively more minor clauses are employed in radio corpus than newspaper corpus;the simple Themes are predominant in both corpora,whereas the radio corpus employ more multiple Themes than newspaper corpus;the unmarked Themes account for the majority of the Themes employed in both corpora;among the marked Themes,Adjuncts as Themes make up the majority of marked Themes,by contrast,no Complements as Themes are found.In terms of the distributions of thematic progression patterns,the constant Theme and simple linear Rheme progression patterns are more popular than the other two patterns in both corpora;relatively more constant Rheme progression patterns are adopted in radio corpus than the newspaper corpus;the crossing pattern is rare in both corpora in that it requires the greater effort in text processing.Based on the above discussion,this conclusion can be drawn: the similarities in the distributions of Themes and thematic progression patterns in the two corpora of sports news reports are caused by their common underlying purpose of facilitating the text processing to ensure the successful transmission of the sports information;meanwhile,the differences in the distributions of Theme and thematic progression patterns can be accounted for by the fact that the text organization is characterized by the ‘register’,specifically the ‘mode’ in the present study.That is to say,the differences in terms of Themes and thematic progression patterns in the two corpora result from the different communication channels.This comparative study enriches the studies of journalistic discourse in terms of on Themes and TP patterns,and its findings can provide valuable references for teaching and writing of sports news reports.