| The study of the referential phenomenon in English has a long tradition in various disciplines. Researchers have analyzed anaphora from a variety of distinct theoretical perspectives—syntactics, functionalism, and pragmatics, to mention just a few. Offering a review of previous studies on anaphora in cognitive field by a contingent of remarkable linguists such as Chafe, Prince, Gundel and Ariel, this thesis is anchored in Ariel's Accessibility theory and based on the fundamental concept of Accessibility, which is the information provided by the anaphor and indicates the relative ease or difficulty with which referent can be accessed.Cognitive linguists argue that the referent of an anaphor is an entity existing in the human working memory rather than in the text or certain context. Anaphora phenomenon is a mental representation. Therefore, the use of referring expressions should also observe the cognitive rule of human mind. Ariel's Accessibility Theory sets up a relationship between availability of an entity in human working memory and the use of referring expression, blazing a new trail in the study of the nature of anaphora.Through a close observation and detailed analysis of concrete newspaper materials, I find that, firstly, in short distance environment, the referring expressions tend to switch from lower accessibility markers to higher ones, mainly changing into zero pronouns or pronouns; in intermediate distance between the same degree, with a significant majority of referring expressions changing into pronouns or NP; in longer distance from higher accessibility markers to lower ones, that is, an overwhelming majority of referring expressions tend to switch to NP and to pronouns occasionally. Secondly, in Chinese newspaper articles, the interruption of topic chains is one of the most important reasons that affect the accessibility of referents thus trigger the switching of referring expressions. Topic chains may be interrupted by the insertion of...
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