Corpus-based Research On The Linguistic Characteristics Of The English Versions Of Government Work Reports(2010-2014)

A small corpus is established with the latest English version of government work report(GWR) made by the Premier of the State Council from 2010 to 2014 and it is studied by means of quantitative count and qualitative analysis. Specifically, representative factors are selected on the levels of words, sentences and rhetorical devices in order to get the linguistic characteristics on these three levels. Based on these characteristics, it makes a synthesis and obtains the overall linguistic features.On the level of words, a study is conducted from the angles of high-frequency words, abbreviations and terminologies. First, it uses corpus retrieval software to get the top 60 words as high-frequency words in each year’s GWR and then analyzes their coverage condition, government’s standpoint reflected by them, as well as the feature of their length; second, it goes from the perspectives of numerical phrases, acronyms, initialisms, blending words and clipped words to make an analysis of abbreviations; third, it analyzes economic, political, educational terminologies and terminologies in other fields.On the level of sentences, common sentences patterns and special sentences are studied. The former expounds common simple sentences, compound sentences and complex sentences in English version, their respective frequency and the relation between these sentence structures and the stylistic characteristics of GWR; the letter states from the angles of imperative sentence, elliptical sentence and inverted sentence to highlight the distinctive features of English version, for the purpose of catering to the language habits of English-speakers and further enhancing the readability of the English version.On the level of rhetorical devices, common positive figures of speech are selected, such as contrast, parallelism, personification, metonymy, antithesis etc. Furthermore, the compatibility of these rhetorical devices with the style of GWR is analyzed.The English version of GWR serves as an authoritative document for other countries to know China’s development trend, and researches on its linguistic characteristics are of great value. First, they contribute to effectively transmitting China’s policies to the international community, making other countries better understand China and thus enhancing China’s international influence. Second, this paper bases itself on the self-established corpus to study the English version and it provides a new research method for official document writing. Third, the detailed analysis on the linguistic characteristics of the English version from the levels of words, sentences and rhetorical devices provides reference for translators and helps to enhance their capability to understand the political articles in English-speaking countries.