A Contrastive Study Of Theme And Thematic Progression Patterns In English And Chinese Introductions To Tourist Attractions

With the prosperity of mass tourism, tourist publicity materials as an efficient tool play a vital role inthe promotion of conveying information and attracting tourists all over the world. In particular,introductions to tourist attractions, brief and informative, can deliver information to tourists moreconveniently and more effectively. In recent years, Halliday’s Thematic Theory and patterns of ThematicProgression (TP) proposed by both domestic and overseas scholars have been carried out on texts of manyfields, observing how the speaker establishes and develops the text and how the information is distributedin the text. However, researches on Theme and TP patterns in introductions to tourist attractions are few,not to mention the contrastive studies between two languages.Based on the Thematic Theory and Thematic Progression patterns, this thesis randomly selects30English introductions to tourist attractions written by English natives and30Chinese ones written byChinese natives as the corpus of the present research. It carries on a contrastive study of Theme and TPpatterns between two language texts, aiming to find out the similarities and differences in the adoption ofTheme and TP patterns and probe into the major factors which may account for such similarities anddifferences, and thus shed light on cross-cultural communication and studies on contrastive linguistics. Forresearch purpose, three research questions are designed:(1) What are the features on the choice of Themein English and Chinese introductions to tourist attractions?(2) In what ways are the differences of ThematicProgression patterns realized between English and Chinese introductions to tourist attractions?(3) What arethe major causes of these differences in the adoption of Thematic Progression patterns?The research findings show that there are overall similarities between English and Chineseintroductions to tourist attractions in terms of Theme and TP patterns, but there are still some differencesdue to discrepancies between two languages. Both English and Chinese samples are extremely rich inSimple Theme, but Elliptical Theme only occurs in Chinese sample texts; constant Theme pattern is themost frequently used in both languages but combined Theme pattern never appears in Chinese sample texts.Moreover, the study probes into the major causes that may affect the adoption and distribution of Themeand TP patterns in the present corpus.This thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter One is mainly concerned about the brief introduction of the present study, dealing withresearch background, research significance, research objectives as well as the outline of the thesis.Chapter Two is the literature review, mainly reviewing some related studies both at home and abroad.In this part, some notions relevant to Thematic Theory and TP patterns proposed by different scholars arepresented respectively.Chapter Three is the research design of this thesis, mainly covering research questions, researchprocedures and data selection. What is more, the working definition and classification of Theme and TPpatterns adopted in this thesis are presented in this chapter and the logical semantic relations betweensentences are clearly enumerated as well.Chapter Four is the data analysis and discussion, the core part of this thesis. Firstly, based on theworking definition and classification of Theme and TP patterns adopted in this research, two sample textschosen from English and Chinese tourist materials are analyzed respectively. Next, after the analysis ofthese two samples, the Theme of each clause in the whole corpus is identified and classified. Besides,different types of Theme are analyzed with the support of some tables and the contrastive approach of suchThemes is laid out. Then, with the aid of logical semantic relations, the TP patterns between sentencesadopted in the whole corpus are identified and the contrastive analysis of these TP patterns is conducted bymeans of some tables. Finally, the data show that there are both similarities and differences in the adoptionof Theme and TP patterns between English and Chinese introductions to tourist attractions. Therefore, thischapter also discusses the underlying factors that cause such similarities and differences.Chapter Five draws a conclusion of the research. It summarizes the research findings, points out theimplications and limitations of the research, and provides some prospects for further study.All in all, the application of Theme and TP patterns provides a new perspective for people studyingtourist materials. This research is helpful for the learners to master the skills in writing and translatingintroductions to tourist attractions as well as for enhancing cross-cultural understanding, and it is of certainreference value for contrastive teaching and genre analysis.