A Comparative Study Of English News Reporting On Expo 2010 Shanghai Between China Daily.com And BBC NEWS.com From The Perspective Of Systemic-Functional Grammar

The rapid growth of the mass media has led the public to provoke profound thought about the effects various media have on society and individuals. Newspaper, one of the sub-categories of mass media, has the potential to bring readers into the realm of mass communication. Although the styles in newspapers are various, news report has unceasingly fired researchers'undiminished enthusiasm for further study and exploration.A large number of previous empirical researches have touched on news reports apropos of traditional stylistics. News reports as a basis for comparison have been seldom engaged in from the viewpoint of Systemic-Functional Grammar. On the score of enhancing the further comprehension of news English, we, in this thesis, embark upon making a comparative study of English News Reporting on Expo 2010 Shanghai between China Daily.com and BBC NEWS.com from the perspective of Systemic-Functional Grammar. The theory of Systemic-Functional Grammar, socially oriented, emphasizes meta-functions of language and depicts the language system by means of delineating the models of language use in specific context. This way of studying is conducive to guiding researchers to make a thorough analysis of distinct styles.This study, on the strength of Systemic-Functional Grammar, performs an analysis of comparing 20 news reports respectively collected from two influential Internet English news websites, i.e. China Daily.com and BBC NEWS.com. Correspondingly, three meta-functions (ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function) are taken into account in the process of corpus analysis. The comprehensive analyses and findings are shown as follows:In comparing transitivity, we find that in news reports from China Daily.com and BBC NEWS.com, material process takes the priority; behavioral process is just a fraction of processes. One of the basic reasons for this wide consensus on the frequent use of the material process in both news reports is mainly that description, information and narration are the salient characteristics of news. At one level, the material process can be interpreted as the one to capture the readers'eyeball and to stimulate them to gain information. On the other hand, the sequence of the processes (from the highest to the lowest) in news reports from China Daily.com is:verbal process, material process, existential process, mental process, relational process, and behavioral process, while news reports from BBC NEWS.com are arranged sequentially (from the highest to the lowest in frequency):material process, verbal process, existential process, mental process, relational process and behavioral process. The more distribution of verbal process in China Daily.com reveals that the reporters of news reports from China Daily.com are more inclined to advert to news origins and authoritative speeches than those of news reports from BBC NEWS.com. For the purpose of confirming authenticity, news reporters of China Daily.com articulate less personal feelings than those of news reports from BBC NEWS.com. Therefore, news reporters of China Daily.com show a more sense of objective attitude than those of news reports from BBC NEWS.com in the process of reporting the news.In comparing mood and modality system, it is quiet obvious that the future tense accounts for the smallest percentage in two news reports. On the contrary, past tense and present tense occupy the predominant position in both news reports. One of the basic reasons is that news reporters cover news in a neutral tone rather than in a hypothetical tone of voice. Furthermore, there is an obvious disparity of the distribution between the past tense ranking first in news reports from China Daily.com and the present tense in the first place in news reports from BBC NEWS.com. News reports from BBC NEWS.com use present tense more frequently to express the timeliness, effectiveness and freshness towards the event, while news reports from China Daily.com focus on the narration of the background of event. Hence, it can be proved that both news reports adopt an equally objective tone excluding subjectivity. In addition, the frequency of modal verb operators in news reports from China Daily.com is higher than that in news reports from BBC NEWS.com. In news reports from China Daily.com, a handful of modality elements are applied to assessment so that reporters are liable to show the objective feelings straightly. Likewise, when using modality elements, reporters from BBC NEWS.com take the same objective attitude.In comparing thematic structures, it is clearly perceived that the frequency of unmarked themes and simple themes occupies the majority between news reports of China Daily.com and BBC NEWS.com. Reporters are subject to adopting simple themes to deliver news directly in order to guarantee the style of simplicity, clarity and formality but unmarked theme to increase readers'reading speed. Nevertheless, the divisions of the unmarked themes are on a different level. Reporters in China Daily.com are inclined to use more unmarked themes and simple themes than those in BBC NEWS.com. For that reason, reporters from China Daily.com tend to convey information and report news in a straightforward manner and require themselves to report the news events objectively.Ultimately, we can discover that news reports from China Daily.com show much more objective attitude than those from BBC NEWS.com in the comparative analysis of transitivity and thematic structures, excepting the same objective tone adopted by two news reports in the process of comparing mood and modality system. Furthermore, the comparison of news reports of China Daily.com and BBC NEWS.com has practically evolved into a breadth of vision of news English and prompted English learners to better comprehend news English.