Systemic Functional Analysis On The Features Of Voa News

The Voice of America is one of the world's most trusted sources for news and information from the United States and around the world. For second language learners it can not only keep them in touch with the latest news in USA, but also serve as an important way for them to broaden their background knowledge of American, improve their listening competence and reading comprehension. Since it places an important role both in American's daily life and Chinese learners'study of English, it is practical and meaningful to analyze the features of VOA news. In this paper, two specific kinds of news: political news and scientific news are chosen as the study object to make a comparative study.Among the dazzling linguistic theories, Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar views language from functional and societal aspects, which is accepted by more and more people. Thus, three Meta functional of SFG are the theoretical tools to find out the characteristic of each functional element in news. Firstly, material process is the highest, which reveals that the field of broadcasting English news is mostly about the events in the world. Its purpose is to try to represent what happens in the world objectively. Secondly, in science news, the percent of relational and verbal process take the second place while political news, relational and mental process is the second frequently used process. Relational Processes are processes of being which includes attributive process and identifying process. Thus it is necessary in both political and science news. Verbal is always related to direct/indirect quotations from different people in the news, which makes the science invent or discovery sounds authoritative and reliable. Most of the mental processes appear in the quotations of the people involved in the news, expressing their assumptions, predictions or suppurations of the reported events. Thirdly, simple present tense mostly used in both kinds of news, which is in accordance with the up to date and quick character of news. Fourthly, in science news, low level modal operator takes the dominate part (61%), median and high level modal operator takes the second place with 22% and 17% for each. While in political news low and media level modal operator take the largest part, with 42% and 51% for each. The former is responsible for the truth and objective of news, usage of low level modal operators like "can, may, could, might" can leave more spare space for his/her statement. While median level modal operator, like "will, would, should," in the later can give the public a positive attitude for the future or hope for the new life influenced by the some refined policies. Finally, constant Theme pattern, constant Rheme pattern, and linear Theme are the mainly used theme appeared in the news, among which constant Theme pattern is most frequently applied. For this structure is simple and clear, therefore,less difficult to understand. It best serves the main purpose of delivering information of broadcasting English news. The cross usage of the three theme pattern make the text structure flexible.Through the contrastive analysis of political and science news, the realization and feature of three meta-function are found in VOA News. Hope these findings can help us have a better understanding of news.