Patterns Of Thematic Progression In English Tourism Introductory Materials

In this globalizing world, China is embracing more and more foreign tourists. Tourism introductory materials (TIMs) play a very important role in boosting inbound tourism.Textual function, under the meta-function framework of Systemic Functional Grammar, serves as a beneficial guide for standardizing such materials in China. The textual meaning is co-realized together by thematic structure, information structure and cohesion. Among the three, thematic progression helps not only maintain a coherent and cohesive text, but also make readers better understand the main information in the text. In order to sort out the distribution of thematic progression patterns in this type of materials, 28 English tourism introductory materials (TIMs) are selected from four foreign websites. The dissertation is composed of six chapters.The first chapter is an introduction to research background, expounding why tourism introductory texts are studied, assessing the significance of the current research and briefing on the framework. Chapter Two—review of literature, probes into previous studies of tourism introductory materials and thematic progression patterns both at home and abroad. The chapter of theoretical framework narrates SFL meta-functions and Halliday's theme/rheme theory, sets up the criteria for identifying themes and introduces ten types of thematic progression patterns. The fourth chapter propounds research questions and hypotheses, elaborates upon data collection and clarifies processing procedures. Then the fifth chapter presents the results of the analysis, tries to analyze the functions of the ten thematic progression patterns and social cultural factors that may affect the adoption and distribution of thematic progression patterns, and briefly evaluates the implication of the research to English TIMs writing. The sixth chapter summarizes research findings, points out limitations and gives suggestions for future studies.