A Corpus-Based Comparative Study On Metadiscourse Marker "Jiushi" In Hong Lou Meng And Its Two English Versions

Metadiscourse is a common language phenomenon, which is usually defined asdiscourse about discourse or talk about talk. Metadiscourse marker refers to the wordsor phrases connecting two or more clauses, exerting the function of showing orhighlighting the semantic relations between discourse units, which mainly belongs toadverb, preposition and conjunction.This paper aims to conduct a comparative study on the usage of metadiscoursemarker Jiushi in Hong Lou Meng and its translation versions by Yang Xianyi and DavidHawks. A corpus of Hong Lou Meng and its two translation versions is established. Thenthe tokens of Jiushi in Hong Lou Meng were counted and the predicate Jiushi wereremoved, which does not belong to metadiscourse marker. There are360Jiushi in thecorpus,128of which are predictive phrases. This paper mainly analyzes the functions ofthe other232metadiscourse markers Jiushi.According to Hyland s metadiscourse classification, metadiscourse Jiushi aredivided into interactive and interactional metadiscourse. Interactive metadiscourseJiushi includes referential marker, exclusive marker, transition marker, and selectivemarker; and interactional metadiscourse Jiushi includes booster marker, hedge markerand attitude marker. Then after making a comparative analysis on the use of Jiushi inHong Lou Meng and its two English versions, the author finds though metadiscoursemarker Jiushi is represented in the two English versions, differences in the use ofJiushi still exist both between the original text and the target text and between the twoEnglish versions. The author tries to analyze these variations from a cognitive linguisticsperspective. Subject factors such as, the translators modes of thinking, content of thinking,and information organizing may all cause it. And the subtleness of the source text is apossible factor influencing the variation.