Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Rationale of the Study
For over a century, and especially in the past quarter-century, we have witnessedthe wide spread of English in the world. Yet some doubts have been arising on thedegree of variation in the forms of English in use. The divergence between one man'sEnglish and another's is great enough to be striking within each of theEnglish-speaking countries,let alone the ones where English is not a native languagebut nevertheless has widespread use for administrative,commercial and other internalpurposes.The present research is a study touching upon English variation across China andAmerica through investigating an embodiment of various modem English varieties --journalistic English,The corpora of the thesis were built upon the sports news during the LondonOlympics of 2012. Sports news report,which holds an important status among vaststream of news every day, is an indispensable part of newspapers at home and abroad,this is primarily due to its enormous nwket demand and readership. Along with therapid economic development, Chinese people take active part in sports,with anincreasing number of sports events, which provide resourceful news and informationfor sports news report. Looking outward, the Westerners, for example, follow evenmore sports reports. The western counterparts' daily coverage of sports events innewspapers is about one third of the total reports, and it amounts to a half whenimportant sports events took place, such as the Olympics and World Cup (翟树耀,2001). Sports news, in a sense, strengthens exchanges between nations, as well asenhances mutual understanding.
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1.2 Objective of the Study
In general, this study proposes to conduct a research of English sports news fromstylistic perspective, referring to the previous scholarly efforts,through contrastivemethod,quantitative and qualitative analysis with the help of computationaltechniques. The following questions are the main concerns of the study:
(1) What are the stylistic features of English sports news reports?
(2) What are the differences between China Daily and New York limes in respectof style? Are there similarities?
(3) What causes the differences?
The practical significance of this study is to compare the stylistic similarities anddifferences between the English sports news reports in China Daily and New YorkTimes, hoping that it will enrich the theory of stylistics by enlarging its applicablearea.Apart from that,from pedagogical perspectives, the research will provide sourcesfor English language teachers in China in writing classes,and Chinese students maybe more efficient in English news writing bearing the features in mind. A vast groupof readers of English newspapers in China are people who want to know what ishappening around us and throughout the world,and some readers read English newsbecause they think it's an efficient way to improve English. Knowing the similaritiesand differences of English sports news across nations will enable the learners tounderstand the text better.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Development of Stylistic Analysis
The developmental stages of stylistics analysis could be traced to as early asancient Greece,where some scholars studied the way to be convincing, manifest, andemotionally moving on public occasions. This was the commencement of rhetoric. Wecan see that rhetoric and speech were closely related at that time. Later,rhetoricbecame one of the compulsory subjects in western schools and its emphasis divertedto the study of techniques in speech and composition, especially figures of speech (王佐良等,1987). In this sense,stylistics is considered as an old branch of learning.But stylistics is also young from another perspective. Modem stylistics developedin the 19也 and 20也 centuries from rhetoric and from the interpretation of literature.The word `stylistics,first appeared only in 1882,and the first book on stylistics waswritten by a French scholar Charles Bally,student of the famous modem linguistFerdinand de Saussure in 1902 and was published in 1909, entitled Traite de Stylistique Francaise, which is often considered as a landmark of modem stylistics. Inthe book, linguistic varieties are discussed from the angle of synonymity, therelationship between the varieties and emotional factors as its focus.Later,the German scholar L. Spitzer, began to analyze literary works from astylistic perspective of view,and therefore,he was called as the 'father of literarystylistics'.
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2.2 An Overview of Journalistic English
The significance of mass media lies in constructing,reflecting,and reinforcingsocial beliefs. The mass media in contemporary society plays an important role in thepersuasive reproduction of dominant ideologies in general. Print medias provide uswith continual news,information and entertainment. It is generally assumed thatmodem English is widely presented through literary works,as well as mass media,including newspapers, magazines,broadcasts, television and the Internet. ModemEnglish develops in a fast speed just as Chinese does. By reading English newspapers, listening to English broadcasts,we may get a better understanding of English,whichhas evolved and varied through years. There are no better devices for recording thechanges and news things that are brought up in English than the English Medias.
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Chapter Three Theoretical Framework............ 16
3.1 Style and Stylistics..........16
3.1.1 Style .......... 16
3.1.2 Stylistics.......... 17
3.2 General Introduction to Stylistic Analysis.......... 19
Chapter Four Research Methodology .......... 21
4.1 Methods Used in the Study .......... 21
4.2 Corpus in the Thesis.......... 23
4.3 Levels of Analysis.......... 26
4.3.1 Graphological Level.......... 27
4.3.2 Lexical Level.......... 28
4.3.3 Syntactical Level.......... 28
4.3.4 Semantic Level.......... 29
4.4 Procedure of Analysis.......... 29
Chapter Five Stylistic Analysis and Discussion.......... 31
5.1 On Graphological Level ..........31
5.2 On Lexical Level.......... 40
5-3 On Syntactic Level.......... 48
5.4 On Semantic Level.......... 57
Chapter Five Stylistic Analysis and Discussion
5.1 On Graphological Level
Graphetic and graphological variation is of great importance in defining thedistinctiveness of journalistic English. Various aspects of design are resources to beutilized for communicative purposes. Graphological features of news reporting aremore obvious than that of other writing styles. Graphological devices are employed tofacilitate reading and highlighting what the editor considers important in the report. Apotential reader is a person whose eye moves swiftly down a page and stops whensomething catches his attention. And the chief means of producing 'eye-catching'effects is by making full use of the graphitic contrasts. Among the various stylemarkers in terms of graphological variation,the present thesis just focus on formatdesign,paragraphing and punctuation as a breaking point,aiming to detect stylisticfeatures of English sports news of the two newspapers.
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Conclusion
English varies during its transition across nations,and forms its own characteristicsin each country, which is also manifested in English sports news writing. Based on theconsumption that English sports news in the newspapers printed in China are differentfrom those in the United States, so far,we have carried out the stylistic analysis andcomparison of the English sports news reports from China Daily and New York Timeson graphological level, lexical level, syntactic level,and semantic level.Under the theoretical structure of Formal Stylistics,and with the aid ofcomputational and statistical analytical methods, we have processed the data and findout the similarities and differences between the two corpora. From a macroperspective, the texts of the two groups are similar in style, but detailed studies showthat some differences exist judged from a micro view. Now, we conclude the majorfindings of the research on each level.
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Reference (omitted)