Quotations In English Business News Reports

In this thesis the writer analyzes the pragmatic functions of quotations in business newsreports. The analysis is based on data of 30 business news reports collected from the frontpage of Wall Street Journal. Pragmatic theories including Speech Act theory, conversationalimplicature, immediate context, as well as presupposition are used in the analysis part. Datacollection and analysis show that in English business news reports, quotations are frequentlyused, and the frequency of indirect quotations is obviously higher than that of direct andpartial ones.In order to account for the phenomena found in the data, this thesis aims to answer thefollowing two questions:1) What pragmatic functions can quotations bring about in business news reporting? And howcan the quotations realize the functions?2) Since direct quotations are most valued in journalism, why do indirect quotations have thehighest frequency among direct, indirect, and partial quotations in business news reports?What prominent functions can indirect quotations bring about?A quantitative study is carried out firstly to calculate frequency distribution of direct, indirect,and partial quotations in business news reports. After that a qualitative study is followed toanalyze the pragmatic functions of quotations in business news reports and look into thereasons why indirect quotations are more frequently used than direct ones in business newsreports.Quotations have been analyzed for a long time. However, few studies have been carried outon quotations in business news reports from linguistic perspective. This thesis is an attempt toextend the quotation studies from conversation, literature, and academic texts into the field ofbusiness news reports with the pragmatic model, which has been proved applicable, but withwhich few studies have been carried out on news language.This thesis is hoped to give some enlightenment into the reporting and understanding ofbusiness news reports for both reporters and readers.