A Comparative Study Of Thematic Progression Patterns In English And Chinese Journalistic Texts

Thematic Progression (TP) is one of the most important devices in analyzing texts. Each clause of written texts in any language can be identified as Theme and Rheme or the Theme part and the Rheme part. Themes and Rhemes in sentences will produce certain relation and variation, which is called TP, through which coherence in texts can be realized. There is no exception in English and Chinese.This thesis attempts to make a comparative study on TP patterns in English and Chinese journalistic texts from two aspects: whether the English and Chinese journalistic texts employ the same TP patterns and the incidence of the identical pattern in each language is alike; and whether different journalistic sub-styles influence the choice of TP patterns.In Chapter One, the author gives some related definitions. Theme and Rheme defined by Halliday are adopted. TP, defined by Danes is accepted. The present comparative analysis focuses on the clause in English and Chinese journalistic texts.Chapter Two reviews researches of TP patterns at home and abroad. Czech linguist Danes puts forward 5 types of TP model. In China, Zhu, Xu and Huang respectively provide their own TP patterns. Based on their achievements, the author makes some modifications and improvements and then gives her own comparative framework.In Chapter Three, the author provides her own quantity research design, including research method, data sampling, and procedures. The data is chosen randomly from four newspapers: New York Times and News Week in English, People's Daily and Guangming's Daily in Chinese. Altogether 60 journalisticintexts in each language are obtained which are categorized into three sub-styles: editorials, news reports and letters from readers.In Chapter Four, description of statistic results is presented. The results show that: the English and Chinese journalistic texts exploit the same TP patterns and there is no striking difference in the incidence of the same pattern, but the sequences of the incidence of TP patterns in the English and Chinese journalistic texts are different. Nevertheless the sequence in entire English journalistic texts and that of texts in each sub-style are the same, hi Chinese, either in the journalistic texts as a whole or in those of the separate sub-styles, the sequences of the incidence of TP patterns are all different. Through statistic results, the author finds out that Ellipsis Theme is overwhelmingly used in Chinese journalistic texts.In Chapter Five, the author attempts to interpret the existence of similarities and differences between the uses of TP patterns in English and Chinese journalistic texts from three aspects: linguistic, stylistic and cognitive. In the brief conclusion, the reasons why some of the results are different from other scholars' are expounded from the manipulative point of view.