On the Language Differences in Magazines Between East and West a Comparative Study of China Daily and Times从中国日报和时代周刊看中西报刊语言的异同.doc

On the Language Differences in Magazines Between East and West: a Comparative Study of China Daily and Times从中国日报和时代周刊看中西报刊语言的异同Abstract This paper illustrates the artistic expressive effects of the difference by analyzing Chinese-English newspaper China daily and English-English newspaper Times. In order to improve the quality of non-native English newspapers, and make them learn from each other by culture inclusiveness. In addition, examination of differences between Chinese English texts and native English texts not only facilitates intercultural communication between China and other countries, especially English-speaking countries in the world, but also brings some insights to the wide spread of English in China and further recognition and standardization of newspapers writing.Key words：Contrastive writing patterns；rhetorical patterns; Newspaper text 摘 要本文旨在从文体学的角度阐述英语报刊文章的语言特色, 从而为报刊语言的发展，报纸的形式以及中国文化下的报刊可以向西方报刊值得借鉴的东西提供一些参考。此外，报刊的阅读对写作水平也有一定的提高，通过对两份报纸的比较，找出写作的一些重要信息。关键词：写作方式对比研究；修饰模式；新闻报刊CONTENTSChapter1 Introduction.11.1 Background Information.11.2 Research Questions2Chapter 2 A Contrastive Analysis of Articles between China daily and Times.3 2.1 Rhetoric Application.4 2.2 Language Difference.5 2.3 Paragraph Development6Chapter3 Implication for Chinese-English newspaper and Native English Newspaper .9 3.1 Implications for Intercultural Communication.10 3.2 Implications for Contrastive Text Studies 11 3.3 Implications for EFL Pedagogy. 12Chapter 4 Conclusion.13References.14Chapter 1 Introduction1.1 Background InformationThe globalization of English in the past few decades helps to promote a dramatically increasing number of English learners and users in China. Additionally, in recent years more and more English newspapers and magazines are released by various Chinese organizations and societies, which greatly facilities Chinas international communication. In the academic circle, scholars advocate that on maintaining the common core of international English, each nation should keep its own national identity, for language is not only the carrier of culture, but also part of culture. This fact, however, serves that on adopting the international formula of English, English texts under different cultural backgrounds also maintain their own writing traditions. This phenomenon can also be interpreted by the contrastive rhetoric hypothesis that there exist preferred rhetorical styles within text, which are specific to cultural-linguistic communities. The founder of contrastive rhetoric, American applied linguist Robert Kaplan (1966:13) stated that language and writing are culture specific, and therefore it varies from culture to culture and even from time to time within a given culture. The difference in rhetoric reflects the mainstream writing conventions unique to each culture Contrastive rhetoric is a field of inquiry that focuses on the different writing conventions of text. Although originally proposed as a pedagogical solution to the problem of second language (L2) organizational structures,contrastive rhetoric has seen a significant growth as an independent discipline with continuous modifications and perfections having been made in the past four decades. During the 1980s, the development of research approaches, such as text linguistics and discourse analysis, helped to improve the methodological orientation of contrastive rhetoric research (Enkvist, 1987; Leki, 1991). As a result, researchers have begun to study organizational structures of both first language (L1) and L2 written discourse more vigorously and systematically (Martin, 1992), and contrastive rhetoric has come to be defined in a broader term, encompassing more than just the organizational structures (Conner, 1996; Ostler, 1996).The contrastive rhetoric study between the Chinese and English writings has also witnessed a flourish in the past forty years. However, most of the researches have been conducted either between Chinese texts and English texts or between Chinese English as a foreign language (EFL) students English compositions and native English-speaking students compositions. Few comparisons have been made between “accomplished” English texts written by Chinese-speaking writers and English-speaking writers. Besides, newspaper argumentative articles, a major mass media genre which bears a great influence upon both the general public and the academic circle, have not been adequately studied. Addressing somemethodological insights from the previous studies, the present study takes the thematic progression and theory of cohesion of text linguistics as its analytic frameworks and focuses on some features of text-level rhetoric which can be observed in newspaper argumentative texts written in different cultural backgrounds, in the hope of contributing knowledge to the similarities and differences in rhetorical patterns between Chinese English1.2 Research Questions 1.whats the difference between china daily and times in language?2. whats the difference between china daily and times in paragraph development?3.Can writing be improved by reading native English newspaper?Chapter 2 A Contrastive Analysis of Articles between China Daily and TimesIn this chapter, the findings are discussed following the research questions concerning the rhetoric application, words contrast and paragraph developing models of the selected texts. Based on this discussion further implications are revealed in the next chapter.2.1 Rhetoric ApplicationThe results reveal that the rhetorical features of argumentative texts from China Daily and Times bear both similarities and differences, all of which must be seen as tendencies, given the small size of the sample. The principal results of the investigation are discussed in accordance with the research questions.The differences between China Daily texts and Times texts in thematic progression show different ways of expression of two variable English texts, in light of the fact that Parallel Progression and Linear Progression denote different ways of expression respectively. Parallel Progression shares the same theme but different themes. In other words, it builds all the new information on the same given information, or around the same central topic. In this sense, it can be taken as a linear way of expression. And the fact that 52.6% of the thematic progression employed in NYT texts is Parallel Progression indicates the mainstream way of expression in native English texts is linear development. This result has also been ensured by the later findings of linear and non-linear paragraph developing models of both newspaper texts. Since linear way of expression is so prevailing in NYT texts, it can not be neglected either that Parallel Progression also ranks second in CD texts, which may show that Chinese English texts also has a comparatively large tendency of linear way of expression. There may be two reasons for this tendency. First, the ever more frequent intercultural communication with other nations in the world leads to the acceptance of general international norms as well as the common language regulation. It is true that in using a language, whether native or foreign, one can not avoid revealing his national imprint. But an ever-growing contact between people from different nations requires a swift, direct and easy-going way of expression in order to meet success in intercultural communication. The linear way of expression in western tradition thus meets this requirement and prevails along with the English language. Chinese English texts, which adhere to the linguistic norm of English language on one hand, also keep a balance between English and Chinese rhetorical traditions as well. In recent years, it even has a trend for Chinese English texts to adhere more to the English way of expression.Second, newspaper argumentative texts as a genre also attributes to the high usage of linear development. The purpose of newspaper argumentative articles is to influence the opinions of readers on some controversial issue. Therefore, it requires an explicit way of argumentation and reasoning, which serves best to the construction of opinion. Although linear way of expression in both CD texts and NYT texts becomes a prominent feature, it is also noteworthy that in CD texts, more than 50% of the thematic progression employed is Linear Progression. In Linear Progression, the theme or part of the theme of previous utterance develops into a new theme, with which a new theme is elicited and this theme or part of this theme again becomes the theme of the next utterance.This type of progression resembles the traditional Chinese rhetorical device of Chain Repetition, which means join head and tail of the adjacent sentence. Although Linear Progression can not be simply taken as a linear or non-linear way of expression, the high employment of it in CD texts shows a cultural transfer of Chinese rhetorical tradition2.2 Language DifferenceThe news is based on the features of its shortage comparing with other articles. In that case, it should list the main information of the news, and the followings are least important information in accordance to readers courisity. The methods of news writing can be categized into two ways:One is according to the time, and the other is from most important to least important one. Besides news are closely related to ordinary peoples life so that the word are required to be easily understood., taking China daily as an example. Since it is a Chinese-English newspaper, and mainly written by Chinese English learners, the language are written in Chinese ways with less slangs. Comparatively words in Times are accurate. It is said that “Short words are best, and old words, when short, are the best of all. Being well applied with this principle, the followings can be regarded as examples: About is better than with reference to Although is better than despite the fact that, meeting is better than rendezvous.In both newspapers small words will be attach much importance to (1)New bar on immigrants(Dui yi min de xin jing ling )。(bar rather than prohibit is applied in this sentence)。(2)Call for student drug probe(Yao qiu diao cha tong xue de xi du wen ti)。(probe rather than investigate is applied in this sentence )(3)Labor split on prices(Guan yu wu jian wen ti gong dang nei bu yi jian fen qi )。(split rather than disagree is used)。(4)Socialists ahead in poll(She hui dang ren zai xuan ju zhong ling xian )。(poll rather than election is applied in this sentence)(5)Briton held in south Africa(Ying guo ren zai nan fei bei kou) (hold rather than keep under or arrest is applied in this sentence)However, China daily would much like to use those so-called big words. For example they use effectuate instead of do, terminate instead of end,Blithe instead of joyful,in this day instead of today, endeavor instead of try.Other similars can be seen as follows:With the possible exception of = exceptDue to the fact that = becauseHe totally lacked the ability to = he couldn'tFor the purpose of = toAt the present time = nowA large number of = many2.3 Paragraph DevelopmentIn order to find out whether Chinese English texts fits Kaplans assertion of oriental languages spiral paragraph developing model, this study examines most of the paragraphs, except for the very short ones. In the following analysis, the reason for dividing paragraph developing models into liner and non-liner ones, but not applying Kaplans liner and spiral categorization is that non-liner model is not necessarily spiral. Statistics of types of paragraph developing models of the selected data indicates no significant differences of liner and non-linear binary between the two newspapers.China daily texts and Time texts do not have a great difference in the paragraph developing models, which are categorized as linear and non-linear binary in this study. According to the findings of this study, most of the China daily texts develop in a linear order, with only one or two paragraphs developing in a non-linear order. Some of the texts even develop in a linear order without a single non-linear developing 35 paragraph. However, it is noteworthy that among the fourteen paragraphs of C6, six of which are developed in a non-linear order. But even with such a highest percentage of non-linear developing paragraphs as C6, its linear developing paragraphs are still more than a half.Among the Time texts, almost one half of the texts have employed both the linear developing model and non-linear developing model. The highest percentage of the non-linear developing model occurs in A6, with two non-linear developing paragraphs out of the total seven paragraphs at a 36 percentage of 28.6%. However, compared with the highest percentage of non-linear developing model in China daily texts (42.9%), this percentage is comparatively low. In other words, although Time texts also have non-linear developing paragraphs, the percentage is low and can not be taken as a mainstream characteristic.From the above findings of frequencies, no significant differences are found between the two sets of texts in paragraph developing models. To further test whether there exists no categorical differences, K-MeansCluster Method is used. Overall, the results show both similarities and differences in distribution of rhetoric application language difference, and paragraph developing models between texts of China Daily and Times.For thematic progression, China Daily texts and The New York Times texts show categorical differences. CD texts tend to employ Linear Progression most frequently and Parallel Progression for the second; on the other hand, Times texts tend to employ Parallel Progression most frequently and Linear Progression for the second. All the other four types of thematic progression are employed little or none in both CD texts and Times texts.Both China Daily texts and Times texts employ a large percentage of cohesive devices as reference, conjunction and lexical cohesion, as well as a small percentage of substitution and ellipsis. However, differences lie in the distribution of each sub-category.Comparatively, CD texts employ more ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion, but less reference and substitution than Times texts.For paragraph de