A Comparative Study On Evidentiality Of Chinese And American English News Reports In The Context Of Crisis

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the similarities and differences of evidentiality of the English news reports on crisis in China and America as well as the possible reasons for the similarities and differences,concentrating on the comparative analysis of evidentiality of Chinese and American English news reports on crisis.As an important discourse,news has already attracted much attention in the academic field.And based on different perspectives,some scholars have focused on the study of Chinese news reports or English news reports,or on the comparative study of English and Chinese news reports.This research project is designed to make a specific corpus analysis of the English news reports on crisis in China and America in recent years on the basis of a review of relevant literature.And the present research will adopt quantitative analysis to find out the similarities and differences in evidentials of similar English news reports on the same events in the context of crisis,and qualitative analysis is a favorable choice in order to contrast the characteristics of evidentials in the two corpora and then to analyze the deep reasons for the similarities and differences in evidentials and their lexical realizations in the English news reports on crisis in the two countries.The findings underline that Chinese and American reporters' reporting tune on the crisis events in China and America is similar.And hearsay evidentials,expectations evidentials and deduction evidentials are most frequently used both in Chinese and American English news reports.On the other hand,Chinese English news reports tend to use induction evidentials,while American English news reports prefer applying verbal resources evidentials.In general,Chinese English news reports use a small vocabulary while American English news reports employ relatively rich expressions.Their similarities and differences in evidentials lie in three aspects,which are the general communicative intention of news reports,differences in thinking patterns of Chinese and Americans and familiarity with English used as the working language.The main conclusion is that the differences in evidentials of the English news reports on crisis in China and America reflect the differences in language use of Chinese and American English news reports and in thinking patterns of Chinese and Americans.