A Comparative Study On Themes And Thematic Progression Patterns Of English And Chinese Movie Reviews

Movie entertainment has been growing so fast,and a larger number of wonderful movies have come up.As an essential part of movie entertainment,not only in the aspect of bringing in and evaluating movies but attracting the interests of so many movie viewers.A great many researchers have devoted to the exploration of movie reviews in a variety of aspects.But,actually most researchers attach great importance on the practical aspects of movie reviews.They don't pay attention to the language aspect of this specific genre.To be more specific,the previous studies on movie reviews are quite limited from the perspective of linguistics.Thus,in the light of Halliday's(1985)Theme-Rheme theory and Danes' s(1974)theory of Thematic Progression Patterns(TP Patterns),the thesis is dedicated to conduct a comparative analysis about the employment of themes and Thematic Progression Patterns of movie reviews of the two languages.Based on the previous relevant researches on TP Patterns,six types of Thematic Progressions,which are the Continuous Pattern,the Same Theme Pattern,the Same Rheme Pattern,the Irregular Pattern,the Alternative Pattern,and the T1+R1-T2 Pattern have been employed in this research.And 50 passages of English movie reviews and 50 passages of Chinese movie reviews adopted from well-known newsthesiss are chosen at random as the corpora and qualitative and quantitative researches have been used to finish the research.The major findings of the present research are concluded in the following passages:As for theme types,(1)Simple Themes are the most frequently-used themes compared with Multiple Themes.(2)Among Multiple Themes,it can be observed that there exits a certain number of Interpersonal Themes in this research,while the Textual Themes bear the largest proportion.(3)In terms of the Markedness,compared with Marked Themes,Unmarked Themes are employed more frequent.While,there are also some differences in percentages and frequencies of different theme types in both corpora.(1)Simple Themes,in Chinese movie reviews,occupy a larger percentage,while Clausal themes bear a larger percentage in English movie reviews.(2)Among Multiple themes,the percentage of Textual Themes in Chinese movie reviews is less than that in English movie reviews.(3)We can find from the data that there are more absence of themes occurred in Chinese movie reviews than that in English movie reviews.As for the choice of TP Patterns,similarities in the choice of TP Patterns are:(1)all six TP Patterns have been employed both in English and Chinese movie reviews.(2)The most popular TP Pattern occur in both languages is the Same Theme.Still,some differences between them still exist.(1)In English movie reviews,the sequence of the six TP Patterns is presented as the following: the Same Theme pattern > the Continuous pattern > the Irregular pattern > the Same Rheme pattern > the Alternative pattern >T2=T1+R1 pattern;However,the sequence of the percentages in Chinese movie reviews is: the Same Theme > the Same Rheme > the Irregular > The Continous > the Alternative > T2=T1+R1.(2)the Same Theme Pattern bears a higher proportion in English movie reviews than that in Chinese movie reviews,even though it is the most popular TP Pattern in the two groups.(3)Except for the Same Theme Pattern,the most frequently-used TP Pattern is the Continuous in English movie reviews.However it bears a low proportion in Chinese movie review.(4)Except for the Same Theme Pattern,the most frequently-used TP Pattern is the Same Rheme in Chinese movie reviews.However it bears a low proportion in English movie reviews.(5)the Alternative Pattern,in English movie reviews,has a larger percentage compared with that in Chinese movie reviews,though it is in minor use in both English and Chinese movie reviews.(6)There are more the Irregular Pattern in Chinese movie reviews,compared with that in English movie reviews.By this research the application of TP Patterns can be broaden and the practical value of Halliday's Theme-Rheme theory and Thematic Progression Patterns can be better presented under the context of movie reviews.At the same time,as for students,it is productive to recognize the linguistic preference of the two corpora and the possible reasons for the linguistic preference.In this way,students can be assisted to reach a better understanding of both English and Chinese.Also,this research throws light on further writing,teaching and translating of movie reviews...