Text Analysis From The Perspective Of Thematic Progression

Translation studies have always been borrowing results of research from other linguistic fields. In recent years, they have been drawing heavily on text linguistics. In the seven standards of textuality put forward by Beaugrande and Dressier, cohesion and coherence are studied most thoroughly. However, such a study is carried out in the traditional way. While in this thesis, the study is carried out from the perspective of thematic progression, a concept put forward by Danes, a Prague School linguist. This thesis takes news texts as the materials of study, and the focus is on the TP networks of news texts and their translation between English and Chinese.Drawing heavily upon Halliday's identification of theme and rheme, this thesis also refers to other scholars' research results before making up a clear identification system for the sake of analysis. Then in seeking the TP pattern between two clauses, I abide by Hu Zhuanglin's three most basic patterns of T1→T2, R1→T2 and T1+R1→T2. Then a TP network is drawn for the current piece of news in the case study.There are altogether five chapters in this thesis. In chapter 1, the introduction, definitions of key terms—theme, rheme and thematic progression are provided. Then some distinctions are made between the theme-rheme structure, the subject-predicate structure and the topic-comment structure.In chapter 2, a literature review is made on the study of thematic progression in English and Chinese languages and its application to translation studies.In chapter 3, a case study of TP network in one sample Chinese news text and one sample English news text is made. Altogether 10 news texts with five Chinese and five English are studied and a conclusion is made to see the characteristics of thematic progression in the news texts of the two languages.In chapter 4, TP is applied to the translation of Chinese and English news. Principles that should be abode by in news translation are observed in the analysis.In chapter 5, a conclusion is made on the contributions of this thesis. And some limitations of this thesis are also examined. Suggestions for further study are given at last.