Pragmatic Functions Of Reporting Speech In English Disaster News

Based on the speech act theory and concept of immediate context, this thesis is devoted to examine the pragmatic functions of reporting speech in disaster news through analysis of reporting speech in40sample disaster news from BBC covering natural disaster and human disaster faced by the world in2011. The sample news include reports on the Japan earthquake, Thailand and Pakistan floods, Africa drought, Chile volcano and Libya unrest. Reporting speech is composed of attribution, reporting verb and modifier (not every reporting speech has a modifier). When a speech is quoted by the news reporter, its original illocutionary act and perlocutionary act are not clear since the speech is out of the original context. Therefore an immediate context is needed to actualize the potential illocutionary act and perlocutionary act. This context is provided by reporting speech.Based on Searle’s classification of illocutionary act, this thesis classified reporting verbs in disaster news into such categories as assertives, directives, commissives, expressives and declarations. The modifiers are grouped into time/place modifier, speaker modifier, contrast/similarity modifier and explaining modifier based on the concept of immediate context. An quantitative study is first adopted to calculate the distribution and frequency of different reporting verbs and modifiers in40samples. It is finally found that the most frequently used reporting verb is assertives and modifier is time/place modifier.Then a qualitative study is carried out to dig out the detailed functions reporting verbs and modifiers play in disaster news and a large amount of examples are given to illustrate these functions. It is found that the main functions of reporting verbs are to indicate the illocutionary act of the reported speech and to signal the reported speech. To be specific, reporting verbs indicate such behaviors as the assertive act, directive act, expressive act, commissive act, declaration and estimative act of reported speech. For indicating directive act, reporting verbs indicate appeal, urge, order and advice. For indicating expressive act, the reporting verbs indicate sympathy and fear, warning, sadness and concern, accusation and condemnation as well as other feelings. The main functions of modifiers in disaster news are indicating time and place, specifying speakers including witnesses, officials and specialists, indicating contrast or similarity of reported information, explaining the reported speech and bringing out the exact source of reported speech.It is hoped that this study can help disaster news reporters to better use reporting speech and readers can have a better understanding of reporting speech in disaster news.