Realization Of Textual Metafunction Through Passivism In English Journalistic Texts

The studies on English journalistic text in China began in the early 1980s and became prosperous in the early 1990s. Most of these studies are done from the lexical, syntactic or rhetorical perspectives. Some researches base their researches on the components of English journalistic texts and then analyze one specific component from the above three perspectives. The discussion about the Systemic-Functional Grammar (SFG) in China began in the 1970s. However, it is not until the late 1980s that it became a popular practice. Most of these researches aim to introduce the fundamental claims of the SFG and only a few researches have tried to use the theories of SFG to guide the practice of comprehension of texts. But few scholars make the attempt to use the theories of the SFG to analyze English journalistic text.Passive voice is one of the two voices in English language and different schools of linguistics have studied passivism from different angles, commonly within the grammatical scope at the syntactic level, grammatical level and semantic level. Analysis has found that it occupies quite a proportion in English journalistic texts. However, according to the author's collected information and materials, there is no evidence to show that researches on passivism in journalistic texts have been done from the perspective of SFG. Owing to this situation, the author of this thesis makes an initiative and tentative endeavor to apply the theoretical claims of the SFG to the analysis of passivism of English journalistic texts, hoping to prove that the theories of SFG can be used to analyze English journalistic texts and are actually effective.To address the topic, this thesis adopts the method of positivism. Using all those claims of the SFG, the author analyzes thirteen journalistic texts in detail.From the Systemic-Grammar perspective, this thesis discusses the textual function of passivism in English journalistic text. At the same time, the research method of comparison is also adopted. In certain journalistic texts selected as examples in the thesis, passive clauses have been converted into non-passive clauses, through which the comparison is established in order to show that passivism does not only realize the textual functions but also contributes to the realization of objectivity of a journalistic text. Through the analysis and discussion the thesis finds that journalistic texts which are narrating-oriented tend to have six functions: i.e. theme-stressing function, theme-introducing function, theme-transferring function, focus-protruding function, focus-contrasting function and cohesion-developing function.From the analysis the author finds that passivism is very important in organizing a journalistic text through the means of pragmatic rearrangement, i.e. rearrangement of information. In addition these six functions of passivism are not realized individually in a journalistic text. A passive clause may have several functions in a text. With these textual functions, passivism helps to establish the cohesion and semantic unity of an English journalistic text. Moreover, the intentional employment of passivism contributes heavily to the realization of objectivity, the major characteristic of journalistic texts.