A Comparative Study Of The Newspaper Language Of The Mainland And Taiwan

This thesis mainly discusses the differences between the languages in mainland and Taiwan, which have the same root. When I studied in Taiwan as an exchange student, I found lots of differences of Taiwan Chinese in their newspaper compared to that in the mainland. They often use a lot of traditional and oral words which are not used in Mainland. And there are even traditional Chinese sentences. And I also found that some words in Taiwan don’t exist in the mainland and there are lots of differences between meaning and source of our words.Newspaper of the mainland and Taiwan is used as language material in this thesis. And the thesis can be divided into seven chapters. The first chapter is introduction. To briefly introduce necessity of writing this thesis, a brief history of other researchers on this topic and the characteristics of theirs. At last, the methods of this thesis.Chapter Two describes the difference of writing styles of the cross-strait newspapers. Taiwan’s newspaper prefers to use traditional words, oral words and traditional grammar in their writing.Chapter Three compares the differences of lexicons form and meaning between mainland Chinese and Taiwan Chinese. The consistence and sequence of morphemes are the mainly difference.Chapter Four studies the sources of cross-strait lexicons. They are divided as abstract words, loanwords, dialect words and words that are exclusive in Mainland and Taiwan.Chapter Five discusses the reasons of differences of Chinese in Mainland and Taiwan. And the reasons can be viewed from the internal aspects and external ones. The internal ones are differences in lexicalization standard, rhetoric materials and separation of disyllable words. The external reasons are influences from politics, economy, culture, society, traditions and so on.Chapter Six discusses the interaction of lexicons across the straits, which focuses on Taiwan’s lexicons that are absorbed by the mainland and mainland’s lexicons that are used by Taiwan’s newspaper. According to the frequencies of the absorbed lexicons that are used, their patterns can be divided into deep interaction, superficial interaction, potential interaction and return interaction.Chapter Seven summarizes the differences of languages in the mainland and Taiwan. The thesis discovers that the writing style of Taiwan’s newspaper is more simplified, classical and lively. The differences of lexicons are mainly in forms of morphemes are more than sequences of which. In the aspect of lexicon resources, Taiwan’s abstract words have temporary forms. The loanwords in Taiwan are preferred to be translated both literally and paraphrase. And Taiwan’s dialect words are mainly from Min dialect, which are different from those in mainland which have more resources.