A Contrastive Study Of Cohesive Devices In The Chinese And English Versions Of Government Work Report

Cohesion is one of the important means through which discourse analysis is achieved, and avery useful device of discourse. Since the publication of the influencing book Cohesion in Englishby Halliday and Hason, many researches have been made in the field of cohesion. Scholars homeand abroad discussed and studied cohesion from different perspectives and in different approaches,which contributes to the development and maturity of cohesion theory. This thesis, based on thefindings of previous studies, makes an attempt to investigate the cohesive devices employed in theGovernment Work Report in both their Chinese and English versions systematically and in detail.Within the framework of cohesion theory by Halliday and Hasan, the author, takes the GovernmentWork Report by Premier Wen JiaBao(2010-2012) and their translated English counterparts as theresearch subjects, makes a contrastive discussion of the cohesion devices mainly in a qualitativeway. On the whole, this thesis aims to analyze the similarities and differences in the application ofcohesion devices in the Chinese Government Work Report and the translated English versions aswell. And it also makes a preliminary exploration to the possible causes for these differencesbetween Chinese and English cohesive devices, in the hope of giving some help to the translation ofcohesive devices between Chinese and English, particularly on political documents.Five chapters are included in the thesis:Chapter one is an introduction of the thesis which briefly generalizes the research background,purpose of the study and outlines the whole framework of this thesis.Chapter two is the part of literature review which gives a brief introduction of the developmentof cohesion theory both at home and abroad.Chapter three is a clear description of the research which introduces the research questions, theprocess of data collection and methodology used in the progressing of the research.Chapter four is the main body of the research---a contrast of cohesive devices in the twoversions of Government Work Report is made. In this part, the cohesive devices employed inChinese Government Work Report and the translated English versions are presented in detail withexplicit exemplifications and clear explanation. Last chapter summarized the main findings of the research, give some implications andsuggestions on the translation of cohesive devices, and some limitations of the thesis are included aswell.