Discourse Of China English: A Contrastive Analysis Of Accident News Reports In China Daily And The New York Times

This thesis aims to explore, through a contrastive analysis on news texts from China Daily and The New York Times, discourse features of China English. As a new member of "English families" China English has attracted great attention from a number of linguists and became an important research topic. In contrast, the research on discourse features of China English is not very satisfying either because the research materials are not sound and representative enough or because the method is intuitive rather than data-supported. This thesis will make a contrastive and quantitative study on news texts from China English and American English, to investigate discourse features of China English.The theoretical framework for the research is Rhetorical Structure Theory (short for RST), proposed by Mann and Thompson (1986) to identify hierarchic structure in text, describe the relations between text parts in functional terms, identifying both the transition point of a relation and the extent to which the items are related. As a data-driven contrastive research, 100 news-texts are gathered as research materials from two well-accepted news agencies in China and America, China Daily (short for CD) and The New York Times (short for The NYT). with 50 in each. The study is carried out through the following three parameters: relative frequencies of rhetorical relations; relative frequencies of signaled relations and arrow directions.Through a detailed quantitative analysis, it shows that first China English places much emphasis on debating and contentions with the frequent use of contrast, opposition and concession. Second, China English displays paratactic features at discourse level, when compared with hypotactic features possessed by English from native speakers. Thirdly, China English tends to be weight-fronting at syntactic and discourse level. Fourthly, China English displays a more coordinated and less subordinated organizational features.By the study, the author hopes to offer some useful and different insights for studies on the Chinese variety of English. In addition, this will help English learners acquire the language with the awareness of different discourse features under the cultural influence, and help the foreign readers better understand China English.