A Study On Gender Difference Of Thematic Progression Patterns In English Entertainment News Reports

Studies on language and gender have been a common topic in linguistics. It’s acommon understanding that language involves gender differences in its application.Discourse of men and women forms two systems which are distinct from each otherin many ways. This paper makes a tentative study on gender difference from theperspective of thematic progression patterns.This study collects sixty English entertainment news reports from the famousnewspaper, namely, the Latimes, the Time, Newsweek, Washington Post and theAtlantic, of which thirty samples are written by men and the rest thirty are written bywomen. The research of this paper is carried out under the theoretical frameworks ofHalliday’s Theme-rheme theory, Zhu Yongsheng’s and Huang Yan’s thematicprogression patterns and Xu Shenghuan’s seven logical semantic relations. Thesethree frameworks are combined in the whole analytical process. Taking theentertainment news reports by males and females as objective of the study, this papermakes a contrastive analysis of the thematic progression patterns employed by menand by women in order to answer the following questions:1. What are the similarities and differences between men and women in thechoice of thematic progression patterns?2. What are the possible reasons that lead to the similarities and differences?Through the qualitative and quantitative analysis, the author finds that there areboth commonness and differences between men and women in the choice of TPpatterns. Specifically, the findings can be summarized as follows. First, in theentertainment news reports by male, the sequence order is the Irregular Pattern> theSame Theme Pattern> the Continuous Pattern> the Same Rheme Pattern>theAlternative Pattern. In the entertainment news reports by female, the sequence orderis the Continuous Pattern> the Same Theme> the Same Rheme Pattern>theIrregular Pattern> the Alternative Pattern. Second, the Same Theme Pattern and the Continuous Pattern are used frequently while the Alternative Pattern is leastemployed in both the two groups. Third, the Chi-square test is used for the purposeof finding out those TP patterns which are significantly different used by men and bywomen. There is significant difference between men and women on the same themepattern, the continuous pattern and the irregular pattern.This study also probe into the possible reasons that may lead to the similaritiesand differences between men and women in the aspect of choosing the thematicprogression patterns. The reasons include the biological factor, the psychologicalfactor, the thinking model factor and the social factor.Although there are some limitations in this study in some way, it enriches thestudy of thematic progression in textual function. Meanwhile, it provides a newdirection for the study of gender language. In terms of the research method, theChi-square test is used for the contrastive study in this paper, which ensures thereliability and scientificity, and also it provides the reliable data for the latecomerswho want to do research on gender language from the perspective of thematicprogression patterns.