A Contrastive Analysis Of English And Chinese Hard News From The Perspective Of Register Theory

Systemic functional linguistics emphasizes that the significance of the theory lies in its application,thus the school has always attached importance to the application of its theory.At present,the systemic functional linguistics has been widely applied to the field of language instruction,translation,discourse analysis and corpus construction,which embodies the value demands of the school.As one of the core theories of systemic functional linguistics,register theory is highly practical.Register analysis is one of the main contents and methods in systemic functional linguistics research,and it is also a hot spot of functional linguistics and discourse analysis.Hard news is a concept coming from the western press circle.According to the nature of the news' conditions,news can be divided into hard news and soft news.Hard news usually refers to those serious,eventful,and time-critical themes,including major crimes,accidents,political and economic disputes,wars,and so on,and usually appears on the front pages of the newspaper.Gu Liping(2002)summarizes suddenness,timeliness,destruction and readability as the four characteristics of hard news.Register theory has originated from the theory of context put forward by Malinowski(1923),who was the founder of systemic functional linguistics.Halliday(1964)presents his own ideas on context and register on the basis of Malinowski,and introduces the register analysis into the theoretical system of systemic functional linguistics.Register theory mainly comprises three kinds of variables,which are the field,the tenor,and the mode.They are related to each other closely,and influence the choice of language application through the lexicogrammatical stratum.This linguistic mode provides the theoretical basis for hard news discourse analysis.The field determines the nature of communication,and constitutes the scope of communication.It means that the participant must choose typical linguistic items to communicate in a particular register so as to realize language function effectively and to achieve the purpose of communication.As an interpersonal communication tool,subjective tendencies of language are often penetrated into the seemingly objective reports through lexicogrammatical choice and application,specifically,through the tenor.In terms of mode,the communication of written news is one-way,as a result,no reader's feedback and no directinteraction are involved in it.The author must identify the communication purpose in mind and in advance,choosing to use the best way to express,which is reflected by the application of thematic structure.In order to make sure the authority of corpus,this study will target the news from People's Daily and New York Times as the samples for analysis,selecting two reporting series,which are respectively the United States' Orlando shooting incident that happened in June2016,and President Xi's visit to the United States in September 2016.In addition,in order to ensure the adequacy of the corpus samples,this study will select ten pieces of hard news from each series,including five pieces of English hard news and five pieces of Chinese hard news,a total of twenty pieces of hard news.Each piece of news comprises of at least 120 words.Ten pieces of English samples are numbered from 1 to 10,and 10 pieces of Chinese samples are numbered from 11 to 20.All twenty pieces of news for analysis will be attached to Appendix B.Under the perspective of register theory,this study will use the discourse analysis mode,targeting the clause as the smallest language analysis unit,and take the form of table,applying quantitative method to collect statistics of English and Chinese hard news to analyze the similarities and differences from the lexicogrammatical stratum.The statistics collection will include four aspects,which are the distribution of transitivity system application,the use of mood and modality orientation,the distribution of thematic structure.Then this study will qualitatively analyze the interaction between the four characteristics of the hard news and similarities and differences,linking three metafunctions of systemic functional linguistics to further explore the impact on hard news' semantics,and try to analyze the influence resulted from the rooted cultural and ideological factors.Statistics show that there is a two-way dynamic influence between the field and the choice of hard news' verbs,and the choice of verbs affects the accuracy and simplicity of hard news.And under the influence of the tenor,the hard news prefers the declarative pattern to express the attitude in the subjective explicit way.The flat way more avoids language waste,improving the expression efficiency of hard news.At last,in terms of the mode,the hard news applies more normal way to organize the text,the marked structure is used less,which increases the readability and efficiency of reporting,and compared with English hard news,Chinese hard news applies the adverbial phrases less to organize the text.In theoretical aspect,applying register theory in comparing the English and Chinese hard news will broaden the scope of the application of register theory,and provide a method for the study of other types of discourses from the perspective of register theory.In practice,this study hopes to give some instruction to the writing,reading and translation of hard news discourses.In addition,by analyzing the differences between English and Chinese hard news and their ideological differences,it provides a new perspective for the study of news,reducing the influence of ideological differences.