Discourse Analysis of Internet News

1、 discourse analysis of internet news因特網(wǎng)新聞分析內(nèi)容摘要：本文集中分析因特網(wǎng)新聞的兩大特征：信息性與相關(guān)性。通過(guò)分析因特網(wǎng)新聞來(lái)使讀者對(duì)因特網(wǎng)新聞?dòng)幸欢ǖ牧私?并從中了解到一些因特網(wǎng)文化的發(fā)展方向。關(guān)鍵詞：因特網(wǎng)新聞 分析 結(jié)構(gòu) 信息性 相關(guān)性outlinei. introductionii. internet news informative discourse1. lexical density2. information structureiii. cohesion and coherence of internet news提綱1.the

2、matisation of internet news1. narration structure2. schemataiv. conclusioni. introductioninherited the idea of situational context from malinwoski, halliday abstracts the theory as semiotic construct, which consists of field, tenor and mode. any alteration of these three elements may produce differe

3、nt styles of discourse. by change of the field, it can be news about politics, economy, sports, etc; by change of the tenor, it transforms into news reports, editorials and column writings; by change of the mode, it turns out to be newspaper news, broadcasting news, tv news and internet news. as we

4、know, human language changes under the influence of various social and situational factors. today thanks to the popularization of internet, people can get much more information via internet webpages than they used to do from tv, radio and newspaper. generally speaking, a discourse of internet news i

5、s very recapitulative and informative. but with a further study, internet news has its own specific features, which is somehow different from the forms of discourse on newspaper, tv and radio. in order to help readers have a general knowledge of it, this paper seeks to investigate how informative it

6、 is and how it achieves such cohesion and coherence that enable readers to get clear understanding of the whole discourse.ii. internet news informative discourseas we mention above, internet news is very recapitulative and informative. within a very limited passage length, it gives readers the gener

7、al ideas and even some details and comments about what has happened and what is going on. studying on its lexical density and information structure, we can learn how effective it delivers its information.3. lexical densitylexical density is a term used to tell how much meaningful information contain

8、ed in a discourse is conveyed to its target readers. in linguistic studies, lexical density refers to ratio of lexical words and total words in a discourse:lexical words* 100%total wordslexical density = lexical words include nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbials; empty words refer to prepositions

9、, conjunctives auxiliaries and pronouns. the following table is the lexical density of 5 pieces of internet news from y total wordslexical wordsempty wordslexical densitynews 183346436955.7%news 21801057558.3%news 392057434662.4%news 4109662247456.8%news 556734522260.8%average35962110148658.67%from

10、the statistics, we can see that two pieces density are above 60%; the other three are also higher than 55%, and that the average lexical density of 5 internet news is close to 60%. although the density of internet news discourse is a little bit lower than that of broadcasting news, a type of very fo

11、rmal news writing, it still contains a great amount of meaningful messages, compared with the density of oral discourse, 40% 李悅娥、范宏雅，話語(yǔ)分析m上海：上海外語(yǔ)教育出版社，2002：167 .4. information structureinformation structure deals with the distribution, interrelationship and inner structure of given and new informati

12、on of a discourse. “new information is information that the addressor believes is not known to the addressee, and given information is that the addressor believes is known to the addressee (either because it is physically present in the context or because it has already been mentioned in the discour

13、se).” (gillian brown and george yule, 2000: 154) given information can be judged by two criteria: information has been mentioned in the previous discourse and information can be inferred from the context. and new information does not exist in the aforementioned as well as the context of communicatio

14、n. lets take an example of internet news (titled deadly strain of bird flu found in india) to see how its information distributes in the discourse. new 1 new 1 given 2 new 2 given 3 new 3 given 4 new 4 new 5 new 5 given 6 new 6new 7 given 7new 8 new 8new 9 new 9new 10 new 10new 11 given 11as to this

15、 news, please refer to the following website address: it is generally believed that the given information should be put at the starting point of an utterance (theme), and then follows the new (rheme). however, this rule is not so tough for the example shown at above. at the theme position, 7 sentenc

16、es begin with new information (63.6%), and 2 sentences have rhemes with given information (18%). the result confirms that internet news is a kind of discourse that is highly packed with relative information. readers may have a relatively large number of messages within a relatively small passage.iii

17、. cohesion and coherence of internet newslike other forms of news, internet news is full of new information, and all sentences are very effective in conveying the meaningful messages to readers. however, the more new information is highly packed in a discourse, the less possibility that readers can

18、understand it clearly. then the question arises: how can an internet new discourse achieve such cohesion and coherence that readers can interpret it without difficulty, besides some traditional grammatical ways (such as reference, substitution, ellipsis, and conjunction)? we may probe into this ques

19、tion in the following aspects: the thematisation, narration structure, and schemata.3. thematisation of internet newsin studying the thematic structure, we could know how writer/addressor connects sentences to express his thoughts and convey messages. “the theme is the element which serves as the po

20、int of departure of the message; it is that with which the clause is concerned. the remainder of the message, the part in which the theme developed, is called in prague school terminology the rheme. as a message structure, therefore, a clause consists of a theme accompanied by a rheme; and the struc

21、ture is expressed by the order-whatever is chosen as the theme is put first.”(halliday, 2000:37) in the discussion of information structure, we know that the discourse of internet news, in a certain extent, violates the absolute correspondence of the given-as-theme and the new-as-rheme. nevertheless

22、, the internet news discourse still follows certain thematic modes. seven modes of thematisation have been suggested by huang heng (1985):mode 1t1 r1 t2 (=t1) r2 tn (=t1) rnmode 2t1 r1 t2 (=r1) r2 tn (=rn-1) rnmode 3t1 r1 t2 r2 (=r1) tn rn (=r1)mode 4t1 r1 t2 r2 (=t1) tn rn (=tn-1)mode 5t1 r1 t2 r2

23、t3 (=t1 ) r3 t4 (=t2) r4 tm (=t1) rm tn (=t2) rnmode 6t1 r1 t2 r2 tn rnmode 7t1 r1 t2 (=r1) r2 tn (=r1) rnit is rarely the case that seven modes are all applied in one internet news. only two or three of them are most commonly used. mode 1 and mode 2 are the most frequently used.mode 1: “crude oil f

24、utures spiked more than $2 a barrel amid fears militants would again target the vital industry. light sweet crude for april delivery surged as high as $63.25 a barrel before settling at $62.91, an increase of $2.37 on the new york mercantile exchange. brent crude futures for april delivery jumped $2

25、.06 to $62.60 on london's ice futures exchange.”mode 2: “al-qaida purportedly claimed responsibility for the attack, the first on an oil facility in saudi arabia. the assault raised speculation that the militants were adopting the tactics of insurgents across the border in iraq, where the oil in

26、dustry has been repeatedly targeted.”mode 6 is also applied to maximize coveyed messages: “the h5n1 strain has spread from asia to 10 european countries and africa. at least 92 people have died of the disease. scientists fear the h5n1 strain could mutate into a form that is easily transmitted betwee

27、n humans, causing a pandemic. but the who says it remains difficult for humans to catch the virus.”in an internet news report, the theme always stay the same or alike, and the rhemes develop as the event goes on. these two or three mode helps build up an all-sided report about a news event which rea

28、ders can not only know the process but also enlarge his background knowledge related to the news.4. narration structureaccording to labovs theory of narration structure, a fully-formed narration consists 6 parts: abstract, orientation, complicating action, evaluation, result or resolution and coda 黃

29、國(guó)文，語(yǔ)篇分析概要. m 長(zhǎng)沙: 湖南教育出版社，1988：147148. this narration structure conduces us to observe how writer organizes his discourse to give his readers a complete narration. an internet news report is also a narration of a specific event. that is to say, complete internet news has similar narration structure.

30、at the beginning, news reports usually give readers a lead-in, consisted of abstracts and orientation of an event. the writer usually achieves this by briefing the events main idea with one or two sentences, or by indicating the time, the place, people and the circumstances of the event. in this way

31、, a communication context is established for the readers to interpret the news with ease. in complicating action, a part composed by narrative sentences and cited speeches, internet news report describes the sequence of actions in detail, including some relative speeches, which substantiate the repo

32、rt vividly. actually, internet news is usually composed of a series of reports to reach full narration. throughout the entire narration pervade necessary evaluations or comments, which add more rhetoric effects to the discourse. result and resolution comes at the end of a sequence of actions or even

33、ts. it satisfies readers with a sense of complete story-telling. internet news coda is the summery of a whole event or the conclusion of writers opinions. but not all news has a coda at the end of discourse. 5. schemataschemata are said to be “higher-level complex (and even conventional or habitual)

34、 knowledge structures which function as ideational scaffolding in the organization and interpretation of experience” gillian brown & george yule, discourse analysis m 北京：外語(yǔ)教學(xué)與研究出版社，2000：247like other types of reports, internet news features in conveying promptly as many messages as possible with

35、 the briefest expressions. yet, in order to made readers understand the discourse without puzzles, necessary schemata are required to introduce in the news. internet news has a brief introduction of the reported event at the opening, and some background knowledge at the end. the opening is the core

36、part of the whole report, for it covers the most important information of the news. after the lead-in part, every description and citation of speech directly or indirectly connects to the theme of news. at last part of writing, theres a guide to some other background knowledge that helps readers und

37、erstand the news more thoroughly. for example, if theres internet news on a terrorist attack, the report can begin like this: “suicide bombers carried out a bold attack on the world's largest oil processing facility friday but were stopped from breaking in by guards who fired on their cars, exploding both vehicles and killing the attackers.” the following introductions of the time, place, persons, actions an