Studies In The Rhetoric Of English News Texts

News texts are rhetorical practice. The rhetoric of news texts, in a broad sense, refers to how news texts transmit news values, how news texts persuade readers to accept what news texts transmit, how news texts serve the news communication aim--to persuade. In this dissertation, I will draw sources mainly from classical rhetoric and modern rhetoric (especially that of Kenneth Burke), communication, semiotics and discourse analysis. This dissertation attempts to propose a rhetorical framework for persuasive analysis of news texts, trying to offer new perspectives on the study of English news texts.Firstly, from the general rhetorical theory, I propose a persuasive framework based on the practices of rhetorical researchers, in preparation for explaining how news texts employ rhetorical strategies to transmit messages and values and, work as persuasions amomg audiences. Any rhetorical activities are, in nature, characterized by persuasive features: addressed as persuasion, used as symbolic persuasion and reasonable persuasion.To achieve the persuasive end, three modes of pesuasion are practical: appeals to logos, pathos and ethos. Topic was viewed by the classical rhetoricians as a useful means to aid a speaker in discovering matter for the three modes of appeal. In the preparation and delivery of a persuasive message, two canons--disposition and style--are involved. Disposition is concerned with the organization of speech or texts. Style is concerned with word choice, syntax and figures. Conforming to the persuasive tradition of classical rhetoric, Burke's pentadic analysis of texts suggests to us the motivation which is essential to the understading of persuasion.This dissertation consists of 9 chapters. After a brief introduction to the basic news concepts that are most closely related to this dissertation, Chapter 1 introduces the goals of this study. Chapter 2 presents a literature review of recent studies in the language of news texts both at home and abroad. Chapter 3 outlines a rhetorical framework for analyzing the...