| As the increase of the cultural exchange, people demand for a larger amount of information in themodern times. The news report, as one of the carriers of information, has become a significant way to meettheir demands. The English reports involve politics, economy, culture, sci-tech and so on. As for theEnglish learners in China, reading English news is also an effective way to grasp English skills and to knowabout the culture of foreign countries.Based on Halliday’s Theme-Rheme theory and Danes’ Thematic Progression(TP) theory, this studyaims to further explore the themes and the thematic progression patterns employed in political news,entertainment news, sports news and sci-tech news reports. This research attempts to find out the usingtendencies of the thematic progression patterns in each type of news report and moreover, to work out theunderlying causes for the differences or similarities among these four types of news reports.Based largely upon the objectives of this research, the present study designs three research questions:1. What are the using tendencies of themes in political news reports, entertainment news reports, sportsnews reports and sci-tech news reports?2.Are there any similarities concerning the TP patterns’ usingtendencies in political news reports, entertainment news reports, sports news reports and sci-tech newsreports? If yes, which patterns occupy the dominant places in each type of news report according to theproportion from high to low?3. Can the TP patterns employed in these four types of news reports beinfluenced by the news contents?This study collects sixty news reports as its research data, which cover political news, entertainmentnews, sports news and sci-tech news from two influential official websites---Los Angeles Times andWashington Post. A small-scaled corpus is made up of15political news reports,15sports news reports,15sci-tech news reports and15entertainment news reports (the total number of words in each type of newsreports is4000-5000). Then the thematic progression patterns employed in each type of news report wereidentified and analyzed. Based upon the TP patterns theories by famous linguists abroad and at home, thisstudy summarizes five TP patterns as the theoretical framework, which will be adopted in classifications ofthemes and the statistical analysis of the TP patterns in the news reports.In all these four types of news reports, there are much more unmarked themes than marked themes. The tendencies of using TP patterns in these four kinds of news reports are similar. Constant pattern andsimple liner pattern take up the predominant places in each type of news according to the statistics fromhigh to low. However, in political and entertainment news, the news body and particularity of the eventhave decided the choice of the typical TP pattern with constant and simple liner; the features of alternatereport between the two sides or among more players in the sports news have decided the major usage of thecoordinate pattern; the derived theme pattern are mostly used in the sci-tech news reports because thewriters would like to introduce the new productions from every aspect.This present study consists of five chapters.Chapter One is the introduction of this study, which includes research background, researchmotivation, research objectives and the organization of the thesis.Chapter Two is the literature review which is about the relevant studies and researches at home andabroad.Chapter Three mainly presents the research design of this study, which includes research questions,data collection, research methodology and research procedures.Chapter Four focuses on the research results and discussion. The theme and TP patterns comparisonamong different four types of news reports is made by using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Andthe possible causes that result in such similarities and differences are also discussed in this chapter..Chapter Five offers the overall conclusion for the research, which summarizes the major findings ofthis study and the implications of the research. This chapter also points out the limitations of the presentstudy and the suggestions for the further study.The present study is a new attempt of research on the thematic progression patterns of English newsreports, the research results of which are of much help to the understanding of news reports. |
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