Analyzing The Persuasiveness Of English News Texts From The Perspective Of Rhetoric

News texts, as a public discourse, play a leading role in modern society. It is not only an important mass media which can make readers know the outside world but also a valuable source to teach them to comprehend and produce a qualified text. Generally speaking, people can learn more rhetorical means and gradually become tactical readers and writers of English news texts by reading more English news texts, by analyzing the persuasiveness of the texts and by studying the rhetorical means employed by news reporters whose purpose is to make their texts be persuasive."Persuasiveness"is very important in a text. As Aristotle says,"Rhetoric is the art of persuasion". If a text is not persuasive, it cannot be a good text. However, the rhetoric studies on the persuasiveness of texts are not widely available. Therefore, this thesis makes the persuasiveness of texts as its study theme in an attempt to take a new look into its significance in texts and find out the main rhetorical means to achieve the persuasive end.In classical rhetoric,"Modes"and"Canons"proposed by ancient rhetoricians in Greece are the theories about rhetorical means which are employed to achieve the persuasive end in texts. The former one refers to three persuasive modes--appeals to"Logos', appeals to"Pathos'and appeals to"Ethos', as Aristotle put them. The latter one refers to all the stages or steps in text composition---"Inventio","Dispositio","Elocutio","Memoria"and"Pronuntiatio", as Cicero defined them."Dispositio"and"Elocutio"also can be regarded as two major rhetorical means of persuading.This study is carried out within the rhetorical framework of persuasive"Modes"and"Canons"proposed by ancient rhetoricians to analyze the persuasiveness of English news texts and the rhetorical means adopted in English news texts. It aims at enabling the readers of the thesis to know and understand the significance of"Persuasiveness"and the rhetorical means and devices adopted by news reporters. The author also hopes that the readers of this thesis can become tactical readers and writers of news texts with the help of the rhetorical means and devices and then adapt themselves to the modern society better in the future.