Text Contrastive Analysis Of The Sino-american Constitutions From The Perspective Of Systemic-functional Linguistics And Its Cultural Interpretation

This dissertation, under the guidance of the Systemic&Functional Grammar, theContrastive Linguistics and the Linguistic Culturology serving as an overalltheoretical framework, and by means of a macro-&-micro research method, makes acomprehensive text contrastive analysis of the Constitution of the People’s Republicof China and the Constitution of the United States. On the basis of the knowledge thatculture is considered a key factor in the construction of text, the dissertation also,from the perspective of culture, carries out an elaborate explanation of the linguisticdifferences in these two Constitutions and tries to find out cultural foundationsunderlying the specific linguistic characteristics, as a result of which the author putsforward the idea of “cultural function” of language and establishes a preliminaryframework for the contrastive study of language and culture. The whole dissertationconsists of six chapters, the main idea of each as follows.Chapter One serves as an introduction, which presents not only the background,main idea, methodology and significance but the innovative point of this dissertation.Chapter Two presents a literature review in terms of text analysis, theContrastive Linguistics and Linguistic Culturology, with the aim of rendering thisdissertation more distinctive on a fuller scale.Chapter Three is concerned with the theoretical framework of this dissertation,namely, the Systemic&Functional Grammar, Contrastive Linguistics and LinguisticCulturology, and among others, pays much more attention to the AppliableLinguistics feature of SFG, the determination of TC (tertium comparationi) andHumboldt’s linguistic world view, which as a whole forms the foundation of textanalysis and cultural explanation in this dissertation.Chapter Four, based on the meta-functions of SFG, makes an overall textcontrastive analysis of the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China and theConstitution of the United States, including different types of transitive processes inthe ideational function, mood and modality in the interpersonal function, and thematic structure and active/passive voice in the textual function. This chapter also conducts amacro study of the different cohesive devices and specific characteristics of wordorder in each text.Chapter Five comes up with the idea of “cultural function”, which the authorbelieves is not only an indispensable but an inherent part among all the languagefunctions, determines five cultural parameters in the course of language contrast, andestablishes a preliminary framework for the contrastive study of language and culture.According to the framework, the author discusses the cultural interpretation oflinguistic differences in the two legal texts in terms of the five parameters: geography&history, philosophy, social norms&religion, individual/group consciousness, andthinking pattern. This interpretation gives a further confirmation both for the closeconnection between language and culture and for the existence of cultural function inthe language.Chapter Six is the conclusion, involving the main features and shortcomings ofthis dissertation.