Pragmastylistic Study On The Top News Of China Daily

China Daily is one of the significant media means to publicize China to the foreigners, and its main section news epitomizes the news value and writing style, so the relevant researches into the newspaper are of profound significance. By using the relevant theories in journalism and linguistics, this thesis makes a pragmatic analysis of the stylistic features appear in headlines, leads and body parts in the top news of China Daily. In order to ensure the validity and reliability, this research builds up a database with the main section news totaling 600 pieces from March to August in 2010 after the restructure and reform of the newspaper, and adopts the tools of Microsoft Word and SPSS to make quantitative and qualitative analysis of the pragmastylistic features in these news articles.The bulk of the thesis is composed of three parts. The first part reviews the related researches on journalistic English and China Daily and introduces the theory of pragmastylistics. The second part makes a quantitative analysis of the stylistic features of the three parts of top news in the newspaper. Headlines assume the role of summarizing the whole news and attracting the readers, so the choice of sentence patterns, diction and ellipsis are among the most measurable study objects. The function of leads lies in timely reporting the news and giving prominence to the key points, so the sentence structures and patterns and the choice of subjects are the primary study objects. As for the body part, it provides background information and immediate evidence to guarantee the objectivity and readability of the whole news, so speeches, cohesive devices and insertion of background materials are inevitable stylistic markers to be studied. The third part interprets these stylistic features pragmatically based on the theories of journalism and linguistics and puts forward some referenced suggestions such as the expansion of theme selections, compiling specialized journalistic dictionary and increasing detail descriptions to the desirable improvements like the paucity of transparency, linguistic inappropriateness and the imperfections in writing techniques via drawing on experience from other authoritative English newspapers. This investigation, being a bold tryout to corporate journalism and linguistics, not only helps the readers to fully understand the pragmastylistic features in English news with Chinese characteristics, but also points out the desirable improvements in the top news of China Daily to make it an international standard newspaper.