A Contrastive Study On Textual Organizational Patterns In English And Chinese Narratives

This thesis aims to make a contrastive study on the text organizational patternsbetween English and Chinese narratives from the functional perspective of RhetoricalStructure Theory (RST). The premises of this study do not come about in a vacuum. Theearly work of many linguists' renders precious inspiration for my current study. Based onthe previous achievements, the following three hypotheses are raised and testified in thedissertation. (1) Mann & Thompson's RST can be used for analyzing English and Chinesenarratives. (2) RST narrative organizational structures are culturally specific, which meansEnglish narratives and Chinese narratives possess obviously different rhetorical diagrams.(3)RST narrative organizational structures are subgenre-specific within one culture,which means the three subcategories of narratives belonging to the same culture (eitherEnglish or Chinese) possess distinctive rhetorical diagrams.For the purpose of certifying those hypotheses, 15 Chinese and 15 English narrativewritings covering three subgenres, i.e. excerpts of literary works, newspaper entertainmentarticles and excerpts of Internet novels, have been analyzed and diagramed and the resultturned out like this: firstly, Mann & Thompson's RST is applicable in the contrastiveanalysis between English and Chinese narratives;secondly, based on the two variables:appearance frequencies of rhetorical relations and differences between arrow directions, itis proved that both differences and similarities between English and Chinese narrativerhetorical structures exist;thirdly, based on the two variables mentioned above, bothdifferences and similarities between the rhetorical structures of the three subcategories arefound. Thus, the first hypothesis is proved by the author;whereas, the last two hypothesesare only partially proved.The above discoveries play a significant role in discourse analysis as well as inlanguage teaching and learning. Teachers should help language learners to raise theawareness of the text organizational patterns in both English and Chinese narratives,which may facilitate students in text comprehension and production.