A Genre-based Approach To English Sports Report

As an indispensable part of human social and cultural life, sport is an important symbol of human civilization and is calling forth increasing attention across the globe. Though accounting for a large part of the editorial content of many news media, sports report has not received due attention. No linguistic monograph has ever performed a systematic and all-sided research into the generic structure and features of sports report.On the basis of Swales and Bhatia's Move Models and Hasan's Generic Structure Potential, the author, having selected randomly 60 sports reports covering 13 sports items from The Times, The Mirror, The Guardian, The Washington Times, The Washington Post, China Daily and 21st Century as well as well-known online media such as CNN and ACU, establishes the move-structure by means of qualitative and quantitative analysis, and then anatomizes and justifies the generic features at communicative and linguistic levels.The thesis falls into 5 chapters. Chapter 1 introduces research background, research object and significance and research design. Chapter 2 reviews genre theories, including Generic Structure Potential proposed by Halliday and Hasan and Move Models pioneered and developed by Swales and Bhatia respectively, and then brings forward a workable model for the study. Chapter 3, based on the theories in Chapter 2, conducts an investigation into samples. Qualitative analysis is carried out and then the inferred 6-move structure is tested by quantitative analysis to see if it is applicable in all samples. The statistics show that the postulated 6-move structure is universal to all the samples in the corpus. Move 1: Summarization of the Event. Move 2: Depiction of the Highlight. Move 3: Characterization of the Participants. Move 4: Quotation from the Participants to Enhance Objectivity. Move 5: Depiction of the Thrilling Points of the Event. Move 6: Offer of Background Information of the Participants. Among them, movel, 2, 3, 4, 5 are obligatory while move 6 is optional. Move 1, 2 are fixed in position, move 3; 5 are comparatively stable; move 4, 6 are flexible. Chapter 4 implements a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the generic features of sports report on communicative and linguistic levels. Four features, namely, evocation of empathy, objectivity, accuracy and readability, are found on communicative level. Lexically, compared to other corpuses, relatively high frequencies of numerals, and use of neologisms and abbreviations for simplicity constitute its prominent features. Grammatically, there is a sign of preference for omission of low-information-value words, adoption of present tense to describe the past and employment of active voice. Rhetorically, metaphor is most frequently exercised. Chapter 5 makes a summary of the findings and point out the limitations.