Functional Analysis Of Discourse Features Of Chinese Weather Forecast

Weather forecast is a commonplace in our daily life, and we could see them on newspapers, on TVs or radios, on the internet, etc.. As a discourse pattern, weather forecast exerts the function of predicting the state of atmosphere for a future time and a given location, providing an information assurance for the people in the given place to arrange their living and production wisely. It has been acknowledged that with the rapid development of our society, weather forecast has been playing an increasingly important role in people's life and production. However, for a long time, the stress has habitually been placed on its practical value, and even the linguists cast little attention to its linguistic value as a special discourse pattern. The linguistic analysis of the weather forecast discourse can enable us to have a full and deep understanding of its discourse model and language features, so that the audiences could pick up as much discourse information as possible from it.This thesis employs the Systemic-Functional Grammar (SFG) as its theoretical framework. M. A. K. Halliday (1994: 36), in the preface of his book Introduction to Functional Grammar, holds"…it was being written specifically for those who are studying Grammar for the purpose of text analysis,…"Fang Yan (方琰, 2005) points out since the successful application of this framework into the analysis of ad. discourse by Huang Guowen (黄国文,2001), this Grammar is more suitable than any other linguistic framework for discourse analysis (DA). Yet, up to now, and to my knowledge, there are no linguists or linguistic scholars at home or abroad who have applied this theory into the analysis of Chinese weather forecast discourse. Through the study, we have the evidence that the Systemic-Functional Grammar can be applied to the analysis of Chinese weather forecast discourse. This, on the one hand, could definitely enrich Halliday's Systemic-Functional Grammar and enhance the practicability and universality of this theory, and on the other could make us gain a better comprehension of the discourse pattern and its language features. The data for our analysis are from modern Chinese, whereas the theoretical framework is English-based. Thus, in the process of analysis, we also borrow some current research findings towards modern Chinese which are relevant to our study. Data for the research in this thesis come from the weather forecast programs at around 19:35 every evening on CCTV 1, shortly after the end of CCTV News at 19:00. This paper consists of five chapters.Chapter one is an overall introduction, including the motivation, objectives, theoretical approach, methodology, data source, a brief introduction to the organization of the thesis and our research questions in the last part.Chapter two presents the literature review of major studies on present study from the perspectives of synoptic meteorology, communication theory and linguistics respectively.Chapter three concerns the theoretical framework of this thesis. In this chapter, the theory adopted is presented, namely the Systemic-Functional Grammar by Halliday. With the help of some examples both from English and Chinese, we make a brief introduction to the three metafunctions of the theory. Besides this, in view of the particularity of our chosen data, we also put forward some revisions to the theory we adopt based on some other related studies. They, taken as a whole, function as the integrated theoretical framework for the thesis.Chapter four provides a practical analysis of Chinese weather forecast discourse firmly based on the theoretical framework. Transitivity analysis is conducted first. Among the six processes, existential processes, material processes and relational processes are the priority in use, which is unique to Chinese weather forecast discourse. Behavioural processes do not find their existence in this discourse pattern. Among the top three, existential processes are used more often than the other two, within which the type embodied by Chinese character"有"covers incomparatively larger than that by"(集中/分布)在". This shows that most of the existential processes are structured with the circumstantial elements of place playing as the Themes. By doing so, the weatherman could in the broadcasting make the audiences catch the relatively useful information as soon as possible when hearing their-related information. Compared with the identifying type, the attributive type is the weatherman's top choice in relational processes. Besides, mental processes in this discourse pattern are reflected either by perception or by cognition. As far as verbal processes are concerned, all of them are represented by the phrase of"发布"(with one exception represented by"应该说"). Mood analysis and modal analysis come second. To achieve the objectivity and correctness, declarative mood is the exclusively dominant speech role in this discourse pattern. In modal analysis, probability, temporality, degree and intensity are the three main modal types, with the probability ranking the first. In the probability type, the Chinese character"(可能)会"is its typical embodiment, which accurately stands for the modal feature of Chinese weather forecast discourse—"forecast". We finally move to the thematic and cohesion analysis of the discourse. The frequent use of the constant-Theme and the constant-Rheme pattern makes the structure of this discourse relatively loose, distinct and orderly, causing no confusion to understanding. In cohesion analysis, conjunction and similarity are the two cohesive devices extensively used in the discourse, especially the temporal and the positional expressions in lexical cohesion, which is strikingly unique to Chinese weather forecast discourse.Chapter five reaches the conclusion and points out the limitations still existing within, which in turn gives us a clue to what we will proceed in the direction in the future.