A Comparative Study Of The Evidence Of The THAAD Incident In The Washington Post And China Daily

Not only can evidentiality reflect the information source of the speakers but also it can show the attitude of the speaker.News discourse has always been the research focus of systemic functional linguistics and it also has obvious characteristics of evidentiality.From persepective of evidentiality,this thesis chooses a total of 30 pieces of news about Thaad issue in the Washington Post and China Daily from January to May in 2017 respectively.The combination of quantitative method with qualitative method is used to analyze the evidentiality on Thaad issue in the Washington Post and China Daily.Based on the systemic functional linguistics and Hu Zhunglin's classification of evidential,this thesis has discussed the following four questions:(1)What types of the evidential of the news discourses on Thaad issue in the Washington Post and China Daily are used? How is the evidential distributed?(2)What are the discourse features of news discourses reflected by evidential?(3)What are the similarities and differences in terms of evidential choice?(4)How do these differences occur? What are the factors that result in these differences?Through the analysis,the thesis has the following five findings.Firstly,the hearsay evidential accounts for the majority among all types of evidential.This shows the objectivity and credibility of the journalistic texts.Secondly,in the distribution of evidential types,reliability evidential makes the largest proportion in all of the evidential in the China Daily,which is about 44.8%.The next is hearsay evidential,occupying nearly 37.7%.While in the Washington Post,hearsay evidential makes the greatest proportion of all the evidential,which is about 26.4%.Thirdly,in the frequency of evidential,the frequency of hearsay evidential both in the China Daily and Washington Post is quite high,which is 32.9% and 26.5% respectively.Fourthly,in the realization form of the evidential,all of the realization forms of seven evidential in the Washington Post are more than that in the China Daily.The realization form of the seven evidential in the Washington Post is more complex than that in the China Daily.Fifthly,there are many reasons to cause differences of evidentiality,such as the cultural background,writing habits,the style of newspapers,thought pattern,individual experience and so on.This study is helpful to the people's knowing more about the news reports.At the same time,the research can enrich the theory of evidentiality on the news discourses.