| The trend of globalization has become more and more obvious as the economy of countries is continually developing all over the world. The transmission of information stimulates the development of the world economy. Business news report is always regarded as a good way to connect and master the world economic information and grasp the rules and arts of economic administration. As a sub-genre of English journalism, English Business news has always been an important study subject for stylisticians.M.A.K. Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics aiming to improve discourse understanding and evaluation is an effective theoretical basis of discourse analysis. According to Halliday, language has three metafunctions, i.e. ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function, and they are closely linked as well as the three meanings of any discourse in a context. Among them, the ideational function includes transitivity system and voice. The present thesis based on the ideational function of Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar as the theoretical framework, proceeding with the transitivity system and voice layers qualitatively and quantificationally analyzed15English business news reports which are randomly selected from The Guardian, The New York Times, China Daily and Reuters. Through applying the statistic method, the thesis probed the realization of ideational function in English business news discourse.After the transitivity analysis and data statistic of selected business news reports, we could get that the distribution of the processes shows English business news reports are some time narrations of economic events or business affairs rather than comments of the journalists. In the process distribution, material process occupies a dominating proportion. Material process is dynamic and stereo, and is the describing process to objective events. The higher proportion material process occupies, the truer and more objective the discourse will be. By analyzing, we can see, in English business news discourse, actors of material process are typically concrete objects like persons’ names, organizations, countries, events or pronouns occupying the largest proportion, which demonstrates that news reports are mainly concerned with actions and are to inform the receivers what happens about the economy in the external world. Due to the data or the circumstance concerned with business or economy should be reported objectively and authentically, sometimes, the reporting must use verbal process to quote some authoritative persons or organizations’ words to make the report more convictively. So, verbal processes appear only less frequently than material process in English business news. The reporting usually takes advantage of relational process to describe the qualities of some business areas or products as an entity. The proportion of relational process is also relatively high. While mental process referring to perception, affection and cognition of men or animals, existential process meaning something exists or appears and behavioral process which implies physiological and psychological behavior exist rarely in English business news, especially the mental process. This phenomenon fully embodies that the business news discourse is more like a narrative text.The voice in English business news can be middle, active or passive. A relatively high portion of middle voice indicates in English business news reports, some narration should focus on the subject itself. But in non-middle voice, active voice usually takes up a larger proportion than passive voice. In middle voice, the action of predicate verbs won’t transfer from the subject to other things, but influences the subject directly. In active voice, the subject acts on other participants while in passive voice, the subject is influenced by other participants. Active voice and the passive can be converted into each other without derogatory sense or passive mood, they still could be semantically equivalent. The passive voice puts recipients into the subject position for emphasizing and highlighting. The activities of subject in middle voice are only relative to itself. Active voice is most of time applied to state the fact, the proper using of it can make objective reports to economic events and business news. And reasonable employing of passive voice can not only make the reporting objective and true, but also attract readers’eyes.Through analyzing from the layers of transitivity system and voice, the thesis probed the features of English business news discourse from the perspective of ideational function. Although, the study result has its limitation, it is hoped to be helpful for scholar’s study and journalists’ reports writing. Meanwhile, the study may help English learners enlarge their knowledge, broaden their views and consequently have a better understanding of English business news reading. |
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