A Contrastive Study Of The Thematic Progression Patterns In Chinese And English Tourist Materials

This paper makes a contrastive study of the Thematic Progression patterns(TP)in Chinese Tourist Materials(CTMs)and English Tourist Materials(ETMs)based on TP theory and genre theory with a view to probing into the social-cultural factors which may account for the similarities and differences in the adoption of TP patterns, and thus shedding light on cross-cultural communication and linguistic contrastive teaching.The current study employs a qualitative approach to analyze a corpus of 15 CTMs and 15 ETMs from the official tourism websites. For the specific analysis, TP patterns based on previous studies are proposed as analytical tool, i.e. Parallel, Continuous, Concentrated, Alternative, Derivative and Irregular Progression. The study helps to find out the distribution of each TP pattern in CTMs and ETMs and to figure out the similarities and differences. Then the reasons are explained based on genre theory, to be specific, genre is closely connected with communicative purpose, social and cultural context which influences the choice of TP patterns in different languages.A detailed study shows that Parallel Progression and Continuous Progression are both preferred in two groups of data, while Derivative Progression rarely occurs for both, and the reason lies in the similar communicative purpose and cultural universal. However, even within the same genre, due to different thinking patterns, social values and linguistic characteristics, differences occur in the adoption of TP patterns. First, Irregular Progression occurs much more in CTMs, as Chinese people think in a spiry way without logic and the westerners think in a linear way with logic; Second, Continuous Progression occurs more in ETMs than in CTMs, with 25.6ï¼…and 16.7ï¼…respectively, and the reason goes to the logical thinking and reasoning of the western culture; Third, Ellipsis themes are typical in CTMs, because Chinese is a topic-prominent language without much consideration of subject and English is subject-oriented which is demanding in subject and verb relationship. The results of the study are helpful for cross-cultural understanding and contributive to contrastive teaching in text organization and shed light on genre analysis.