A Contrastive Study Of Themes And Thematic Progression Patterns In English And Chinese Literary Texts

The present study is intended to make a contrastive study of the English and Chinese version of Hemingway's novel The Old Man and the Sea in terms of their choices of themes and thematic progression patterns (TP patterns hereinafter) for the purpose of finding out how the choices of themes and TP patterns in the two versions are similar to and different from each other and exploring the underlying factors responsible for such similarities and differences. The theoretical framework of the study is Halliday's thematic theory and the four basic TP patterns proposed by Zhu Yongsheng.As themes and TP patterns are sensitive to genres, the study only takes some narrative passages from the work as the data. Through a careful statistic analysis, the study summarizes the general distribution features of the themes and TP patterns employed in English and Chinese texts, and then analyses the underlying factors responsible for such similarities and differences.The contrastive analysis generates the following conclusions:First, unmarked themes are far more than marked themes in both texts, but the marked themes in Chinese outnumber the ones in English. Compared with inanimate themes, animate themes are more numerous in both texts. The textual themes in English texts far exceed those in Chinese. The interpersonal themes are very few in both texts, with only one in Chinese texts and none in English at all. Finally, though both English and Chinese texts have zero themes, the percentage in Chinese is higher than in English.Second, the English and Chinese narrative sample texts adopt similar TP patterns with the proportions involved in the one version of texts very close to the other. Of the four patterns proposed by Zhu Yongsheng, the parallel pattern is most preferred, immediately followed by the continuity pattern in both texts of the two languages. By contrast, the concentration pattern accounts for the least percentage in both texts. Another phenomenon worthy of notice is that"zero pattern", which means the clauses are cohesive not by means of TP at clausal level, is used in both English and Chinese narrations. However, differences still exist with"zero pattern"taking the third place in Chinese but the fourth in English. The percentage of intersection pattern is somewhat higher in English than in Chinese.Third, the choices of themes and TP patterns in the two versions of The Old Man and the Sea are closely related to the specific narrative genre, the characterization, the writer's peculiar writing style, etc. The preference of unmarked animate themes is to tell readers what has happened about the main character, giving prominence to the nature of the narrative genre and the plain writing style of the writer; the preferred choice of the parallel pattern highlights the old man's personalities, his iron-will and loneliness; the frequent use of the continuity pattern facilitates the development of the plot; the almost non-availability of interpersonal themes in both versions is also attributable to Hemingway's simple, natural and iceberg or veiled writing style.Fourth, the differences between the sample texts of the two languages mainly result from the typological differences of English and Chinese. English, which favors hypotaxis, uses more textual themes to make the sentences or paragraphs complete and logical; while Chinese, which enjoys parataxis structure, employs more zero themes and the zero pattern, its meaning depending heavily on the context. As for the patterns of expansion, English belongs to the right-branching pattern but Chinese is the left-branching pattern, which accounts for the result that the marked themes are more frequently used in Chinese texts than in English.The conclusions of the study also have pedagogical implications. An adequate knowledge of themes and TP patterns will provide us with a new perspective to interpret and evaluate literary works and will deepen our appreciation of both English and Chinese literary works. Besides, such knowledge will shed light on the improvement of L2 instructions, especially reading, writing and translation. Finally, the knowledge of typological differences could also help language learners to reduce the negative transfer and make good use of positive transfer so as to improve their cross-cultural communications.