顺应论视角下《中国日报》新闻标题的历时研究

发布时间：2016-07-16 13:10

Chapter 1．Introduction

1.1 Rationale and Significance of the Study
News headlines are considered as the eyes of newspapers, through which readerscan get the generalizations and assessments of news content. The language of newsheadlines is special and is characterized by its own features. As we all know, everylanguage definitely changes with the development of the society. Therefore, for onething, to know the language changes of news headlines can help to better understandthe language connotations in newspapers; for another, a diachronic study of languagechanges in news headlines over years can also reflect the trajectory of the political,social and cultural developments of a country.China Daily, established in 1981, is the first and the most influential nationalEnglish newspaper published in the People’s Republic of China since its founding. Itis often called “the window of China”, and is served as an important source forforeign readers to know more about Chinese politics, economy, culture and society. Adiachronic study of China Daily is helpful for a deep insight into the changes in use ofEnglish after the implementation of reform and opening up policy in China. What ismore, it can also conduce to reveal the changes of China over years in all respects,including the development of the society, the progress in economic development, thechanges of views on both international and domestic situations and so forth.Adaptation Theory, proposed by J. Verschueren, is a relatively new pragmatictheory. Though the theory has been applied widely by scholars both at home andabroad, few researches have been conducted on language changes of news headlinesfrom this theoretical angle. Hence, application of Adaptation Theory to explain thecauses of language changes of news headlines in this diachronic study can help tobroaden the researching range of the theory.
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1.2 Research Questions
This study aims to answer the following three questions:1. What are the characteristics of news headlines in China Daily from 1981 to2014?2. What are the changes in language use during these more than thirty years?3. What might be the causes of these changes?
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Chapter 2．Literature Review

2.1 News Headlines
Headline is any line or collection of lines of display that precedes a story tointroduce or summarize it (Westley, 1971:141). News headlines are indispensable toany newspaper. Appearing in front of the whole news reports, news headlines areusually printed in larger size, and can be viewed as generalizations and assessments ofnews content. Good news headlines can not only extract the essence from news facts,but also draw readers’ attention and make them interested in reading the whole newscontent.Since the features of English news headlines and Chinese news headlines are notsimilar to each other, the thesis only reviews the features of English news headlinesdue to the research object. The main features of news headlines lie in 5 aspects,namely wording, tense, voice, omission and sentence structure.News headlines should generalize the maximum content in limited space, and beconcise and easy for readers to read (Li & Zhang, 1993:42). Therefore, wording innews headlines usually prefers midget words. For example, verbs such as “mar”,“top” and “rap” are often used in replacement of “damage”, “exceed”, and “criticize”.Besides, abbreviations and acronyms are also used widely. The usage of abbreviationsis one of the basic features of news headlines due to the principle of economy. Forexample, numbers such as “million” and “billion” are simplified as “m” and “bn”.Other clipped words include “sub”, “vs.”, “Mt.”, “N-test” and the like. Acronyms alsogreatly exist in news headlines, for example, “CPC”, “CPPCC”, “PLO”, “WTO”,“CIA” and so forth.
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2.2 Previous Studies on English News Headlines
Studies on English news headlines have achieved a lot of results as scholars bothabroad and at home probe into this field from various perspectives. Approaches to theanalysis of news headlines can mainly be divided into two types: journalistic approachand linguistic approach. In the field of journalism, news headlines are viewed asplaying an important role in news communication process, so studies in this fieldmainly concentrate on investigating the values and functions of headlines; analyzingthe rules of making headlines and how to maximize its potentials; discussing the roleof journalists and news editors. With regard to linguistic approach to the study ofEnglish news headlines, it mostly focuses on aspects such as grammatical structures,stylistics and so forth under the framework of various linguistic theories.As for studies on news headlines from journalistic approach, Evans (1974) can beregarded as the pioneer. In the book News Headlines, he makes a critical comparisonof news headlines throughout the world and demonstrates that a journalist mustemploy all the arts of compression and allusion to make immediate sense to attractreaders by telling them news. Zhu & Liu (1981) analyze English headlines’ features,including the use of midget words, noun phrases, abbreviations and so forth. Robert &Theodore (1982) lay great emphasis on how to write news headlines by concludingsome commonly-used headline languages. 
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Chapter 3．Theoretical Framework.... 14
3.1 Verschueren’sAdaptation Theory........... 14
3.2AConceptual Framework for the Present Study.....18
Chapter 4．Data Collection andAnalysis........... 21
4.1 Data Collection and Methodology..........21
4.2 Characteristics of Language Use of News Headlines...........22
4.3 Changes of News Headlines in China Daily in Three Periods....... 34
4.4 Causes of Changes.......... 40
Chapter 5. Conclusion..........46
5.1 Major Findings........46
5.2 Limitations of the Study..........48
5.3 Suggestions for Future Research.....49

Chapter 4．Data Collection and Analysis

4.1 Data Collection and Methodology

This thesis adopts both stratified investigation and sampling investigation. First, itdivides the publications of China Daily into three periods based on the differentstages and conditions of social development, namely the early period of reform andopening up, from 1981 to 1991; the middle period of reform and opening up, from1992 to 2002; and the latest period, from 2003 to 2014. Though the newspaper waspublished in 1981, the first six months were trial issues, so the data collection of thepresent study starts from 1982. Besides, it is impossible for the author to get the dataof the whole year 2014, since the commencement of the thesis should start beforeSeptember, 2014. Therefore, to ensure the consistency, the data collection of the thesisends by the year 2013. After deliberating over the materials, data collection in eachperiod starts from the second year in order to be consistent with the first period.Moreover, to clearly examine the language changes diachronically, it is important toset a time span. Though normally the time span set for diachronic studies is five years,in the present study, to ensure the number of the years in each period is the same, thetime span for each period is three years. That is to say, the extracted years of the thesisare 1982, 1985, 1988, 1990 (for the unavailability of most of the articles in 1991),1993, 1996, 1999, 2002, 2004, 2007, 2010 and 2013. Among all the six issuespublished per week, three of them are randomly chosen as the data for the presentstudy. In view of the value of diachronic studies, the thesis mainly selects newsheadlines from the front pages of China Daily, for the news on the front pages usuallycontains various kinds of content which is the most important of the day. All the datamentioned above are from Jinan University Library.

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Conclusion

Based on the framework of Adaptation Theory, the thesis mainly discusses thelanguage use of news headlines in the front pages of China Daily from 1981 to 2014,and finds that significant changes have taken place during these thirty-three years.Firstly, characteristics of language use of news headlines in China Daily in threedifferent periods from 1981 to 2014 are quite different. In the early period of reformand opening up (1981-1991), titles are frequently used in addressing Chinese leaders,which is seldom the case for foreign leaders. Besides, nonstandard usages andmistakes exist in a large number in the news headlines in this period. Furthermore,appealing declarative headlines are widely used. The linguistic characteristics of newsheadlines in the middle period of reform and opening up (1992-2002) are in a state oftransition. Expressions with both typical Chinese characteristics and foreignculturalconnotations appear in the news headlines in this period. Moreover, different from thelarge quantity of appealing headlines that appear in the early period, headlines in thisperiod turn to become narrative and informative. As for the main characteristics oflanguage use of news headlines in the latest period (2003-2014), first of all, informalterms such as spoken expressions or slang are used in abundance. In addition, variousrhetorical devices such as metaphor, personification and parody are greatly employed.What is more, American English replaces British English in this period.
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The reference (omitted)

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