1. 研究目的与意义(文献综述包含参考文献)
1.IntroductionThis chapter presents a general view of the study, including the research background, need of the study, research purposes and organization of the thesis.1.1 Research backgroundNews reports, spreading ideas and guiding public opinions, have attracted much attention in this era with ideology collision and integration. Written discourses on mainstream media are worth researching and analyzing due to the authority and wide influence. Since March 2018, trade frictions between the U.S and China have existed after then-US President Donald Trump signed a memorandum imposing additional tariffs on China. Due to the two countries global influence, trade frictions have been affecting the worlds economy, finance, international trades and politics. Accordingly, the media discourse practice from both sides have been shaped profoundly for the two countries interests and concerns. Since the Sino-US trade frictions have been constantly escalating with the rapid development of Chinas economy, the competition of news discourse has thus been intensified. This comparative study, under such circumstances, of shell nouns used in mainstream news reports from both sides to explore underlying information and attitudes is of great importance. Shell nouns in English texts, like fact, problem and idea, are extensively used for the inherently unspecific property, semantic generality, and cohesive function. Due to all these special features, shell nouns have drawn wide heed during the last two decades. Schmid (2000: 4) defines shell nouns as an open-ended functionally-defined class of abstract nouns that have, to varying degree, the potential of being used as conceptual shells for complex, proposition-like pieces of information. In other words, a shell noun, besides its dictionary meaning, its factual meaning derives from the real use in a specific context. The very presence of a shell noun allows readers either to forecast what may come up in the following parts or to sum up the given information, as Francis (1994: 83) claims that they have either cataphoric or anaphoric function. Shell nouns with cataphoric function present readers a preamble of the following information; those with anaphoric function serve to encapsulate or package the chunks given in the previous text. In addition, shell nouns are effective in constructing stance (Charles, 2003: 314), because to a certain extent, deliberately choosing and using of shell nouns express a writer attitudes or judgments.Additionally, on the whole, shell nouns have not received sufficient attention from linguistics than they deserve (Schmid, 2000: 4), especially in news discourses. Thus this current study fills the gap effectively. Until January 16, 2020, China and the United States signed the first phase of the economic and trade agreement. In this paper, news reports, from January 16, 2019 to January 16, 2020, a key period before the signing of the agreement, related to Sino-US trade frictions in China Daily and the New York Times are selected to compile two corpora. This thesis attempts to look into the semantic and stance features of the shell nouns used in these English texts.1.2 Need of the studyThis thesis has both theoretical and practical meanings. On the one hand, the present study enriches the research on shell nouns based on the academic studies by previous scholars, filling in the research gap, and thus linguistics may pay more attention to and explore features and functions of shell nouns. On the other hand, this study contributes to the optimization of Chinas foreign discourse system. By analyzing shell nouns in written texts from China and the U.S, finding out similarities and distinctions, reveals the underlying information and attitudes encapsulated in them, which helps to convey Chinas messages better and exchange ideas with other countries more accurately. Last but not least, a detailed study of shell nouns enlightens the political discourse writing as well. 1.3 Research purposesThis thesis aims to look into the semantic and stance features of shell nouns used in Sino-US mainstream media news reports on trade frictions, and attempts to find out the similarities and distinctions from both sides. The English texts are collected from China Daily and the New York Times for their authority and wide influence. This study is dedicated to find out the underlying information and attitudes conveyed by shell nouns in order to understand which aspects in fact concern two parties, thus shed light on the situation of trade frictions.2.Literature reviewThis chapter focuses on the review of previous relevant literature for the study. The definition of shell nouns is presented initially, followed by semantic classification and stance features of shell nouns for later analysis. Previous relevant studies on shell nouns both at home and abroad are reviewed. The last part of this chapter is the research gap.2.1 Definition of shell nounsThis unique kind of abstract nouns, shell nouns, has been studied extensively under different terminology. The term general nouns was employed by Halliday and Hasan (1976: 274) in the brief section of Cohesion in English, which refers to a small set of nouns having generalized reference within the major noun classes, those such as human noun, place noun, fact noun and the like. Before long, Winter (1977) re-examined what he called vocabulary 3 with a clause relational approach, and this kind of words appear[ed] to be on a continuum between open- and closed-system meaning with general meaning. In 1992, Winter redefined vocabulary 3 as metalanguage nouns which could be used not only anaphorically but also cataphorically occurring both across and within clauses. The functions of these nouns were also examined by several researchers. Francis (1986: 2) put forward anaphoric nouns to refer to signals in the linear discourse that function as signposts by means of which he/she [reader] is periodically of the central theme. Then Francis (1994) employed another term label. In her study, labels were further divided into two types, including advance labels and retrospective labels, and both anaphoric nouns and labels had the potential to encapsulate information. Ivanic (1991: 95) defined these nouns as carrier nouns which frequently carr[ied] a specific meaning within their context in addition to their dictionary meaning. Flowedew (2003: 329) employed signalling nouns by defining such kind of nouns as any abstract noun, the meaning of which can only be made by specific reference to its context.The term shell nouns was first propounded by Schmid in1997, and then in 2000, he gave a book-lengthy illustration of shell nouns. The book is English Abstract Nouns as Conceptual Shells: From Corpus to Cognition, which gives a very comprehensive description of shell nouns. In his book, he defined shell nouns as an open-ended functionally-defined class of abstract nouns that have, to varying degree, the potential of being used as conceptual shells for complex, proposition-like pieces of information (Schmid, 2000:4). He also summarized four types of lexico-grammatical patters frequently used by shell nouns, namely, shell nouns postnominal clause (N-cl), shell nouns be complementing clause (N-be-cl), referring item shell nouns (th-N) and referring item as subject be shell nouns (the-be-N). The proposal of these four types provides a convenient method for the retrieval of shell nouns in corpus, that is, nouns frequently co-occurring with these four types can be regarded as potential shell nouns (Wei et al., 2016).2.2 Semantic classification of shell nounsThe semantic generality means that a shell noun has the potential to encapsulate information. And the special meaning of a shell noun derives from the real use in a context (Schmid, 2000:87). Moreover, the limited number of semantic features carried by shell nouns makes it easy to classify them. The six categories of shell nouns classified by Schmid (2000) are factual (e.g., fact, thing, point, reason, difference, upshot), linguistic (e.g., news, message, rumor, report, order, proposal, question), mental (e.g., idea, notion, belief, assumption, aim, plan, decision), modal (e.g., possibility, truth, permission, obligation, need, ability), eventive (e.g., act, move, measure, reaction, attempt, tradition, trick) and circumstantial in accordance with their semantic features (e.g., situation, context, place, area, time, way, approach). This classification is adopted in this paper.2.3 Stance features of shell nounsShell nouns are effective in constructing stance (Charles, 2003: 314) as a writers attitudes or judgments, to a certain extent, are expressed in the deliberately choosing and using of shell nouns. According to Biber et al. (1999: 973), the stance features of shell nouns fall into two categories: epistemic stance and attitudinal stance. Shell nouns that with epistemic stance are used to indicate predictions or evaluations of certainty, truth, accuracy, etc., of information in a proposition; those with attitudinal stance report personal attitudes and feelings toward a proposition. In this paper, the study on the stance feature of shell nouns refers to this standard.2.4 Related empirical studies at home and abroadThe researches of shell nouns have been conducted from different perspectives. In this section, the review of shell nouns mainly focuses on related empirical studies at home and abroad.2.4.1 Related empirical studies at homeIn China, several learners look into this kind of abstract nouns and have made great achievements though the study of shell nouns started later than western learners. Lou (2015) examined the features of shell nouns used in Chinese graduates theses based on learners EAP corpus. The results indicated that there existed misuse and omission of shell nouns in learners writing when shell nouns are used to express epistemic stance. Sun (2017) analyzed the factual shell nouns used by Chinese EFL learners across different stages and focused on their developmental features within the framework of Collostruction Theory. Hu and Chen (2018) conducted a corpus-based study of shell nouns in American Presidents speeches exemplified by Trumps speeches before and after his inauguration. The results suggested that the proportions of semantic categories before and after inauguration are close, both of which are dominated by factual and eventive shell nouns. 2.4.2 Related empirical studies abroadHinkle (2001) makes a comparative analysis of shell nouns as a kind of cohesive device between native English speakers and Korean English learners in English academic writing. The finding shows that shell nouns are frequently used by Korean English learners in comparison with native English speakers. Aktas and Cortes (2008) examined the use of shell nouns between published writers and international graduates. The cataphoric and anaphoric function of shell nouns were emphasized. They found that some shell nouns are used at higher frequency by international graduate students than that by published writers. Flowerdew (2010) focused on the cohesive function of shell nouns in two corpora. This research studied the general frequency of shell nouns and different lexico-grammatical patters from the aspect of anaphoric, cataphoric, across-clause as well as in-clause. The result shows that Cantonese English learners use fewer shell nouns than native English speakers do.2.5 Research gapAlthough the researches on shell nouns have made great achievements in the past 20 years, they mainly focused on academic discourse, the output of written language by native L2 speakers and language learners (Hu Chen, 2018: 82). Few scholars have studied the use of shell nouns in media discourse. Based on the semantic classifications of shell nouns and four types of shell nouns retrieval criteria by Schmid (2000), with reference to the stance classifications of shell nouns by Biber (1999: 972), this paper discusses the semantic and stance features of shell nouns in news reports of mainstream media in China and the United States.
2. 研究的基本内容、问题解决措施及方案
This paper looks into the semantic and stance features of shell nouns used in the Sino-American mainstream media new reports on trade frictions. The specific research questions are:1.What are the semantic similarities or distinctions of shell nouns?2.What are the similarities or distinctions between the stances conveyed by shell nouns?Based on two self-compiled corpora, this thesis aims to look into the semantic and stance features of shell nouns used in Sino-US mainstream media news reports on trade frictions, and attempts to find out the similarities and distinctions from both sides. The English texts are collected from China Daily and the New York Times for their authority and wide influence. This study is dedicated to find out the underlying information and attitudes conveyed by shell nouns in order to understand which aspects in fact concern two parties, thus shed light on the situation of trade frictions.According to four types of shell nouns structures put forward by Schmid (2000: 4), shell nouns are identified and retrieved from the two corpora by using AntConc 4.0.3, and then their frequency is determined. First, regular expressions are used to retrieve corresponding structures. After sorting the index rows, the corresponding sentences are manually screened out and it is indispensable to examine the use of potential shell nouns in order to select the real shell nouns as well as their patterns in the context. The original and standard frequency of shell nouns are later calculated.
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