A Cognitive Approach To Verbal Nominatization Of English News Headlines

Nominalization is one marginal language phenomenon, which is widely used intechnological, law and news discourses. Scholars of structural linguistics,transformational-generative linguistics, cognitive linguistics and pragmatics havedone some studies on nominalization from various perspectives. However, somelimitations are in all these researches such as the negligence of context and beinglack of the explanation of the construal mechanism of this language phenomenon. Inaccordance with cognitive grammar, nouns designate entity and verbs designateprocess. However, incongruence forms through the construal of experience, one ofwhich is verbal nominalization. Verb and noun are two important word classes.Therefore, transformation between the two word classes is the focus of linguisticstudy.As the mouthpiece of ruling party of some English-speaking countries, Englishnews headlines impose some ideologies of these governments on readers, whichmake the unknown, nonpublic information formally known, so as to induce readersto accept controversial and untrue information. Verbal nominalization in Englishnews headlines can act this function.This thesis attempts to construct a new mode ECM~+, by amending ECM andFigure-ground Theory to do some study on verbal nominalization in English newsheadlines so as to reveal the construal mechanism of verbal nominalization and theideology of some political parties conveyed by the verbal nominalization.ECM is a new cognitive-analysis mode based on the weakness of sometheoretical models by some linguists, which owns the features of linear andhierarchical analysis and dynamic and static description. Although this model canrightly explain the change of parts of speech of words, especially verbalnominalization, it cannot sufficiently explain the construal mechanism of verbalnominalization in a set certain of circumstances. Therefore, this thesis constructs a new model ECM~+by amending ECM and Figure-ground Theory. This new modelcombines ECM, the network with linear and hierarchical analysis with figure-groundtheory to make the form of verbal nominalization the figure and the ideologydelivered to readers unconsciously the background. Although the contents in thebackground are not the salience of prominence, they are still the indispensableelements of the whole event domain which provide the background and explanationfor the figure. The verbal nominalization in the English news headline acts as thefigure and the background is the ideology of some political parties conveyed toreaders unconsciously.This thesis includes five chapters. The first chapter is introduction. The secondchapter is literature review, a summary account of studies on verbal nominalizationof different linguistic schools. The third chapter is the detailed analysis of theconstruction of the new model ECM~+. The forth chapter is the application of the newmodel on the analysis of verbal nominalization on English news headlines. The lastchapter is the summary of the whole thesis.