A Corpus-based Comparative Study Of Metadiscourse Marker“zài” In Hong Lou Meng And Its Two English Versions

Metadiscourse is an important means for writers to make a coherent prose and tomaintain a good relationship with readers. It helps the writers correctly express theirviewpoints and attitudes towards the audience and meanwhile guides the readers tobetter understand the texts, thus making the interaction achievable for both writers andreaders.The thesis is about the comparative study of metadiscourse marker “Zài” in thenovel of Hong Lou Meng and two translated versions by Yang Xianyi and David Hawksbased on the corpus. With the help of ParaConc software, the author built a PCCE of thenovel. On account of the research method which is corpus-driven, the author has gotthe following results.Firstly, the author identified all the metadiscourse “Zài” in Hong Long Meng whichoccurs930times in the text. Based on Hyland’s classification of metadiscourse, theauthor divided the functions of “Zài” into two functional categories: interactive functionand interactional function. What’s more, four subcategories are found under thecategory of interactive function: sequential marker, progressive marker, cause and effectmarker, and coordinate marker; and one subcategory under the interactional function,namely, attitude marker. Secondly, the author sorted the different utilization frequenciesof the five sub-functions and then did the descriptive and comparative translation stud y.According to the study, the author found that the five functions of “Zài” are all wellrepresented in the two English versions with only a few “Zài” are found with omissionin the translations under each sub-function. Besides, the omission of the translation of“Zài” exists in the two target texts with different degrees.At last, based on the analysis of the corpora, the author discussed the possiblecauses which lead to the different translation and omission of “Zài” in two target texts.The present study may not only make exploration on metadiscourse study but also makecontributions to the studies of translation on Hong Long Meng. Besides, it will shedlight upon the proper use of metadiscourse to English learners.