Stylistic Features Of Official Press Release English

Official press release language (OPRL) is the language used by government officials or spokespersons at press conferences, on behalf of the government, to express their viewpoints on certain important events or to answer questions from the mass media. Linguists and sociologists have carried out some research on it in the relevant aspects. However, so far not much directly related exploration has shed light on stylistic features of OPRL. By using English-versioned transcript of Chinese and American official press conference, the thesis will study the stylistic features of the official press release English (OPRE) in the three meta-functional dimensions: ideational, interpersonal and textual, aiming to find out how the discourse is composed and how the meaning is conveyed and interpreted. The thesis is a qualitative study with data proof as a whole. Lexical density, processes distributing, average sentence length, formality, mood distribution and violation of Gricean Cooperative Principle are the parameters to be under statistics. Generally, in each segment, the total number of a certain parameter will be counted, with its proportion and average being calculated. Other parameters such as lexical, sentential and textual features are difficult to be quantified. Therefore methods of observation and exemplification are applied to support discussions on turn taking, correcting structures, repetition, interruption and adjacency pairs etc. Furthermore, in order to further dig into the stylistic features of the sub-registers, the independent t-test is used to verify whether the statistical difference is significant enough to distinguish Chinese OPRE and American OPRE from each other.Through the three-dimensioned discussion, we conclude that OPRE is a formal and objective spoken language applied at official press conferences, revealing the government's reaction to important domestic and international events. At the conferences the reporters and the spokesperson do not share a peer-to-peer relationship. Each party has both initiatives and disadvantages. Ascendancy of the spokesperson is observed during the communication. Formal though it is, the composing of OPRE discourse is still marked with spoken features. Question-answer adjacency pairs construct the main body of the whole conference. Interruption, repetition and correcting structures appear frequently. Under the general features of the register, Chinese OPRE and American OPRE distinguish from each other by significant differences in aspects of lexical density, average sentence length and process distribution, which reveals that Chinese OPRE is more formal than American OPRE.The thesis provides a comprehensive description of the stylistic features of OPRE. The research findings are good reference for commentators to effectively obtain information from foreign official press conferences, and for domestic spokespersons or their interpreters to make speeches that better meet the global customs. It also offers the reader some clues to understand and appreciate the language arts of the particular register.