| Business news reporting is one of the important branches of news reports, which is closely related to human activities. Therefore, it always draws readers'attention, especially that reported in central and local newspapers. In this sense, it is important and necessary to analyze how the thematic structure and its progression patterns are in business news reports.In this study, the analysis will be based on Systemic-Functional Linguistics. It is well-known that Halliday is the leading representative of systemic-functional linguistics, in which the three meta-functions of the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual are employed to support this study. In terms of textual metafunction, thematic structure is of great importance. On the basis of the theory of thematic structure, Halliday proposed thematic progression patterns, which are widely applied to the analysis of a variety of texts. However, it is few to apply this theory to business news reports. The present study randomly selects 30 business news reports from English edition of China Daily, covering 2010, including real estate, unemployment and so on. And each news report is long or short. This paper adopts Halliday's thematic structure theory and Huang Yan's seven thematic progression models to make a quantitative and qualititative analysis for 30 business news reports. This study mainly deals with the following three research questions:1. What are the features of thematic structure and thematic progression patterns in China Daily business news reports?2. What factors contribute to these features?3. What functions do these features play in China Daily business news reports?After study, the following three conclusions are achieved:1. China Daily business news reports present their own features: Unmarked theme, simple theme and the constant theme model are of the highest percent and always rank first to be chosen by journalists.2. Thought pattern, objectivity and westerners'creativity and personality contribute to these features.3. These features play a coherent role in China Daily business news reports.This study not only applies thematic structure theory and thematic progression patterns to the study of business news reports but also has the important practical value. As for readers, it can effectively help them comprehend the reports to grasp the organization of the texts. As for journalists or editors, it can improve their efficiency in news-reporting or news-editing. Finally, the layout of this paper is as follows: Chapter One mainly introduces the background of the study, its purpose and significance, gives three research questions and lists the structure of this study. Chapter Two reviews the related studies, including related studies on thematic structure and thematic progression patterns, studies on applications of thematic structure and thematic progression patterns to text analysis and studies on applications of thematic structure and thematic progression patterns to news reports in China. Chapter Three lists the theoretical basis of this research and data collection and research procedure. Chapter Four lists the results of the research and answers three research questions. Chapter Five firstly makes a conclusion of this paper, then proposes the limitations and last gives the recommendations of the future study. |
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