A Contrastive Analysis On Thematic Progression Of Chinese And American Government Reports

Reports on the Work of the Chinese Governmentand State of the Union Address(RWGs and SUAs for short)are delivered by government leaders in public to give the whole nation the information about what has been achieved and what will be done at the beginning of each year,which are considered as government reports in China and the U.S..Chinese and American government reports,as a type of text,have their own features in the selection of Thematic Progression patterns(TP patterns for short).Chinese and American government reports,as the research subjects,they are contrasted in detail to explore thesimilarities and differences regarding TP patterns between them,which aremore conducive to comprehend the language characters and expressions of government reports.Guided by the theoretical framework of M.Halliday’s Theme Theory and F·Danes’ s Thematic Progression,this study makes a contrastive analysis of RWGs and SUAs from the year of 2011 to 2015.It aims to study the features and distribution of TP patterns in RWGs and SUAs.Therefore,this study tends to address the following three questions for this research:(1)What are the characteristics of TP patterns in RWGs and SUAs respectively?(2)What are the similarities and differences of TP patterns between RWGs and SUAs?(3)What are the underlying factors for these similarities and differences?This research chooses RWGs and SUAs between 2011 and 2015 as the research materials,whichare downloaded from the authoritative websites(www.china.com.cn andwww.whitehouse.gov)both in China and the U.S..Through comprehensive analysis of the data,the analysis results are illustrated in the following three aspects.Firstly,the amount of clauses in RWGs over the period of recent 5 years is more or less equivalent.In addition,constant theme patterns(CT patterns)as well as split rheme patterns(SR patterns)are the most frequently used in RWGs,while the figures for derived theme patterns(DT patterns),alternative patterns(AL patterns)and irregular patterns(IR patterns)are comparatively lower than other TP patterns.While the total numbers of the clauses in SUAs from the year of 2011 to 2015 are also nearly the same.And the percentage of constant rheme pattern(CR pattern)is the highest among seven TP patterns used in SUAs during the past five years except for the year of 2015,where the figure is little lower than constant theme pattern.While during the same period,alternative pattern used in SUAs is the lowest on average.Secondly,there are similarities and differences existing in Chinese and American government reports in terms of selecting TP patterns.Three aspects of similarities are indicated in this research.They are:(1)Chinese and American government reports have the similar preference in the use of four kinds of TP patterns.They are constant rheme pattern,constant theme pattern,simple linear pattern,and split rheme pattern;(2)Regarding to textual organization,constant theme pattern plays a relatively dominant role in RWGs and SUAs;(3)Alternative pattern is the one with the low frequency in both two languages.The distinctive differences withregard tousing TP patterns in both reports are:(1)The percentage of constant rheme patterns in SUAs is nearly three times more than that in RWGs;(2)The figure for split rheme pattern in RWGs is two times more than that in SUA data;(3)The proportion of derived theme pattern in RWGs is around double to that in SUAs.Thirdly,based on the illustrationof similarities and differences mentioned above,thisresearch tends to discuss possible causes in three aspects: same genre of the text,cultural factors and language features.Broadly speaking,the similarities on the use of TP patterns in RWGs and SUAs are mainly caused by the same political genre,while the differences between RWGs and SUAs are basically due to cultural divergences and different language features.The findings of this research may be significant to the appreciation of government reports.Since RWGs and SUAs are to express information to the public,a better understanding of TP patterns can help people grasp the delivered messages immediately.In addition,TP patterns are beneficial to achieve textual coherence,and it can help organize a text semantically and logically.Furthermore,the study also makes a focus on comparison and contrast between RWGs and SUAs,which is conducive to have a better understanding of different features of TP patterns in Chinese and American government reports.Finally,the main findings of this research would contribute to second or foreign language learning a lot.Government reports from both China and the U.S.are formal and well-organized by native speakers,and TP patterns are closely linked to textual organization.Thus mastering TP patterns in these reportsis helpful for non-native speakers learning English.This research consists of five chapters.Chapter One briefly introduces research motivations,research objectives,and significance of this research as well as the organization of this thesis.Chapter Twois Literature Review,which tends to illustrate the related theoretical studies on TP patterns.Chapter Three is theresearch design,including research questions,research data collection as well as the research procedure.Chapter Fouristo firstlymake a contrastive study of Thematic Progression in RWGs and SUAs in detailed way,and then figures out the possible factors leading to the similarities and differences.Chapter Five is the concluding part of this research,which firstly summarizes the major findings of this research,indicates theoretical and pragmatic implications from the previous analysis,points out the limitations of the research,and finally makes suggestions for studies in the future.