A Stylistic Analysis Of Washington Post Editorial

Stylistics is a branch of linguistics that studies the style of language. The main task of Stylistics is not simply to describe the formal features of text for their own sake, but to show their functional significance for the interpretation of the text; or in order to relate possible meanings to linguistic "causes" where these are felt to be relevant.With China's entrance to the World Trade Organization, the economic and cultural exchange with foreign countries is increasing. All messages and new things are presented in mass media, and one of the traditional media to transmit news is newspaper. Newspaper as a more stable and reliable written form of media is becoming more and more indispensable to people's life. It is especially so for the foreign language learners. As foreign language learners, they can get to know the latest changes taking place in the world. Readers can not only improve their English but also learn what is happening in politics, economy, army, science and culture in English speaking countries. The editorials, by which editors or authority of a newspaper express their opinions, are generally regarded as a vital part of a newspaper. As a special text type, an editorial has its own stylistic characteristics, combining the stylistic features of news and those of common argument article. The diction, sentence structures, organization and grammar in the editorial are different from those of general English and ordinary English news reports. The thesis attempts to help the foreign language learners systematically learn the English editorials by examining the stylistic features of twenty editorials selected from Washington Post.The thesis introduces the background of English editorials, the researches on the editorials already conducted by the linguists at home and abroad. In the thesis, theoretical background of Stylistics, including the definition, research subjects, analysis methods, history and current situations of stylistic study are given. However, the attention is focused on the stylistic features of English editorial in three aspects: Phonological features and graph logical features; lexical feature and syntactical feature; and semantic feature. The analysis generally follows three steps: Description (mainly linguistic)—Interpretation—Evaluation. Systematic investigation of the linguistic data is a characteristic of this discussion. Because of the close relation between the Stylistics and rhetorical devices, also conducted is the analysis of the most frequent rhetorical device in editorials-rhetorical questions. The stylistic analysis in semantic level is focused on thematic progression, cohesion and paragraph development.The analysis reveals the following stylistic features of Washington Post editorials: First, determined by its context of situation: Washington post editorials contain some new words; the frequently used tenses in it are the simple present, and the past tense and future tense are not often used due to the function of editorials. Washington Post editorials are characterized by formal written language instead of exhibiting features of spoken language. Second, the editorial writers make good use of different language skills to make the editorial vivid, forceful, courteous and effective to influence the readers' idea including the use of appositive clauses, subjective clauses, participles, a variety of sentence patterns and suitable rhetorical devices and so on. And semantically, the parallel thematic progression occurring in editorials frequently, the editorial writer often uses reference and conjunction as cohesion devices by examining the twenty editorials selected from Washington Post. As for paragraph development, most paragraphs in Washington Post editorials are developed in linear way.