A Comparative Study Of Nominalization In Report On The Work Of The Government Of China And The State Of The Union Address Of America From Register Perspective

Nominalization exists in different languages and is widely used in different types of discourse,especially political discourse.Political discourse is a unique discourse type,always as a hot object of study.The State of the Union Address of America and Report on the Work of the Government of China are both the review of the administrative program about the past year and the outlook for the coming year.It is a typical kind of political discourse,and has a special effect on the public.Register,as a functional variety of language,according to Halliday,includes three variables---field,tenor,mode,which reflects situational contextual factors that determine the selection of the right meaning of language in a text.The present research tries to examine nominalizations in the State of the Union Address of America(SUA)and Report on the Work of the Government of China(RWG)under the guidance of register theory,and specifically makes a comparative analysis of nominalizations of the two discourses from the perspective of field,tenor and mode.This present research aims to answer following questions:(1)What are the distribution features of nominalizations in RWG and SUA?(2)How do nominalizations construe the field of political discourses of RWG and SUA? What are the similarities and differences in RWG and SUA?(3)How do nominalizations construe the tenor of political discourses of RWG and SUA? What are the similarities and differences in RWG and SUA?(4)How do nominalizations construe the mode of political discourses of RWG and SUA? What are the similarities and differences in RWG and SUA? The research used quantitative method to measure the frequency and the distribution of each kind of nominalizations in the discourses and qualitative method to compare and analyze similarities and differences from the perspective of field,tenor and mode.The research results are as follows:(1)Nominalizations of process appears the most frequently,followed by nominalizations of quality in both discourses.The difference is that nominalizations in RWG are nearly three times more than those in SUA.And nominalizations of process in RWG are more than those in SUA,while nominalizations of quality in RWG are much less than those in SUA.(2)In terms of field,the two discourses have strong clarity and pertinence,their contents are both related to work and policy,and there are abundant words from political register.However,nominalizations in the two reports reflect different topics and focuses that RWG has close relation to people’s livelihood,such as employment and education,as well as development plans like reform work and technology innovation,etc.,while those in SUA just relate to the people’s daily life and working achievements led by Trump.(3)From the perspective of tenor,the major and essential similarity is the presentation of authority and objectivity.The most significant difference is that they show different power relation and political concern.SUA stresses Trump’s great power by some exaggerated and emotional words,but RWG emphasizes plenty of specific working measures,so SUA seems to show a little more sense of casualness and closeness than RWG.In addition,RWG uses some positive words to show humanistic care when it comes to COVID-19 while SUA does not.(4)In terms of mode,the two discourses are “written to be read or spoken”,thus their style is extremely formal and concise.But SUA shows more features of spoken language and RWG shows more features of written language from the use of nominalizations.Short and simple sentences are common in both discourses,and nominalizations contribute to increasing semantic intensiveness and logic transition.The difference is that Chinese discourse has more noun phrases that are composed of nominalizations than SUA.This structure can constitute parallel structure in RWG.Besides,there are many repetitions of the nominalizations in RWG,which has an effect of emphasis.While English discourse prefers pronouns to refer to the same thing.This research analyzes how nominalizations constitute political discourses from the perspective of register,explores the roles of nominalization in construing field,tenor and mode of Chinese and American political discourse,which enriches the studies of nominalizations and political discourse analysis.The research results are helpful for constructing and understanding political discourses,and provides implications for translation,language learning and teaching.