优秀英语论文范文十篇精选

本文是一篇英语论文，英语由古代从丹麦等斯堪的纳维亚半岛以及德国、荷兰及周边移民至不列颠群岛的盎格鲁、撒克逊以及朱特部落的白人所说的语言演变而来，并通过英国的殖民活动传播到了世界各地。（以上内容来自百度百科）今天为大家推荐一篇英语论文，供大家参考。

优秀英语论文范文篇一

Chapter One Introduction

To begin with this chapter, background of the problem and significance of thisstudy are firstly introduced. Then it will be followed by the description of the researchquestions. At last, this chapter will discuss the organization of this thesis.

1.1 Background of the Problem

There are many factors affecting language acquisition, one of which ismotivation. Motivation is perhaps the most frequently used term to explain success orfailure of any complicated task, with no exception of language learning and teaching(Brown, 2000; Lightbown & Spada, 2002). So it is the same case for second languageacquisition (SLA). It is considered to originate from the perspective of psychologyand gradually evolves into many other disciplines, as second language learning andteaching. In the field of L2 studies, experts and researchers commonly regard RobertGardner and Wallace Lambert as the first to bring motivation from the perspective ofpsychology to the perspective of language learning. Since L2 motivation’s debut inthe 1950s, it has received increasingly considerable attention, and many foreignlanguage and second language experts have done a great quantity of researches on itover the past several decades.Motivation has processed many successive phases. D?rnyei and Ushioda (2012)have made them four distinctive phases: (a) The social-psychological period(1959-1990), with Robert Gardner and his partners as the leading researchers from thefield of social psychology in Canada; (b) the cognitive-situated period (during the1990s), mainly focusing on the work of cognitive theories in educational psychology;(c) the process-oriented period (turn of the century), emphasizing on motivationalchange; (d) the socio-dynamic period (current), which is the latest phase concerningon dynamic systems and contextual interactions.

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1.2 Significance of the Study

Considering into the current situation of English teaching and learning inChinese college, paralleling with the lack of enough empirical studies on L2MSS inEnglish majors, the significance of this study can be listed as the following facets.First and foremost, in terms of its theoretical contribution, L2MSS theory is arelatively new outcome of the motivation theory. Although L2 scholars have madesome studies on it (Boo et al., 2015; Csizér & Kormos, 2009; Liu, 2010, 2015;Taguchi et al., 2009), there exists a controversy among those researchers, which isthat some believe that ideal L2 self is a superior concept for the explanation ofstudents’ learning motivation (D?rnyei & Ushioda, 2009; Islam, 2013), while othersdo not agree with it (Far et al., 2012; Wang & Dai, 2015). Therefore, more empiricalstudies on L2MSS are still in need to test it (Liu, 2015; Gao & Zhou, 2009).Secondly, from the perspective of methodological benefits, by searchingdocuments at home and abroad, it is obvious to conclude that researches in this theoryare far from satisfaction. Especially in the domestic field of SLA, some researchersstudy the middle-school students and high-school students; others analyze theconditions of non-English college students (Liu et al., 2012; Peng, 2015; Wei, 2013,2014; Xu & Zhang, 2013; Zhan, 2015; Zhan & Hong, 2015), and there are onlyseveral researchers take English majors (Liu, 2010) as their subjects. Therefore, theresearcher attaches her attention on English majors. What’s more, few studies analyzeit from an empirical perspective. Hence, it is of great importance to study Englishmajors’ L2MSS by employing both quantitative and qualitative approaches, which isnaturally a support for the current domestic researches on it.

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Chapter Two Literature Review

After having briefly introduced this research, it’s turn to retrospect the recentstudies on L2 Motivational Self System theory. In this chapter, the researcher firstlyparticularizes the theoretical bases of this research, i.e., Possible Selves theory,Self-discrepancy Theory, both of which are the fundamental theories of L2Motivational Self System theory, and the L2 Motivational Self System theory. Afterthat, the researcher demonstrates the correlative researches abroad, and then relevantresearches at home. By presenting the literature review, the researcher aims to reach amuch more sound knowledge of this theory, so as to do a profound research on it.

2.1 L2 Motivational Self System Theory

The present study is based on L2 Motivational Self System theory, which isproposed by D?rnyei (2005, 2009b). The term Self occupies an imperative part in theresearch of psychology. During the past two decades, self-theory scholars becomemore interested in the activity and dynamics of L2 self system which has theregulation function in learning motivation and behavior. Self puts its foci on morepsychological variables, and links learner’s mental state to dynamic behavior.Therefore, L2MSS takes Self as the center of motivation and behavior, based onpossible selves theory and self-discrepancy theory.

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2.2 Recent Studies on L2 Motivational Self System Abroad and at Home

As the latest outcome of second language motivation, L2 Motivational SelfSystem was firstly proposed by D?rnyei (2005) in his book The Psychology of theLanguage Learner, and then got better interpretations in his two books (2009a, 2009).Since then, it has received many attentions both from abroad and at home, this partwill discuss the recent studies.L2MSS theory concentrates on the perspective of L2 self. This theory broadensresearching fields of L2 motivation, and takes much more influential factors intoconsideration, notably the ‘self’ concept (Liu, 2010). Since its first proposal, manyresearchers attached great importance to it, and some researchers have done greatefforts on it within different foreign language learning contexts, as in Hungary (Csizér& D?rnyei, 2005; Kormos & Csizér, 2008), Iran (Far et al., 2012; Papi, 2010),Pakistani (Islam et al., 2013), Sri Lanka (Prasangani, 2015), and seldom in China(D?rnyei & Chan, 2013; You & D?rnyei, 2016), in addition to multi-foreign languagelearning context (Henry, 2010). Most studies done on this theory were mainly tovalidate its practicability (Islam et al., 2013); while some researchers studied thecorrelation between the L2MSS theory and other factors influencing L2 learning, e.g.,the correlation between L2MSS theory’s three components and English anxiety (Papi,2010) or intended efforts (Rajab et al., 2012). Some researched learners’ ideal L2 selfand integrativeness (Far, 2012), others with English proficiency (Kim & Kim, 2014),or learners’ learning goals (Prasangani, 2015).

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Chapter Three Methodology.... 22

3.1 Restatement of the Research Questions.... 22

3.2 Subjects........ 23

3.3 Instruments............23

3.4 Data Collection Procedures.....26

3.5 Data Analysis.........27

Chapter Four Results and Discussion........29

4.1 Answers to Research Question 1......29

4.2 Answers to Research Question 2......32

4.3 Answers to Research Question 3......37

Chapter Five Conclusions.........45

5.1 Major Findings...... 45

5.2 Implications...........47

5.3 Limitations and Suggestions for Future Studies..........49

Chapter Four Results and Discussion

The above three chapters mainly discuss the introduction, the previously relativestudies and research methodology of the present research, and this chapter will lay itsstress on the results of data analysis and discussion. As has been discussed above, theresearcher aims to answer three research questions, and the first one is to find theoverall situation of English majors’ L2MSS, the second one is to check whether thereare any differences of English majors’ L2MSS within different L2 proficiency levelstudents, and the last one is to figure out the potential reasons resulting in thosedifferences. In order to answer those questions, the researcher analyzed thesequestionnaires and interviews respectively.The researcher employs SPSS17.0 to process the quantitative data getting fromthese collected questionnaires to answer three questions, and the interviews are alsostudied as a supplement for the questionnaire. This chapter consists of three parts, andeach parts relates to one research question respectively.

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Conclusions

The current research is conducted to explore the overall condition of L2motivational self-system among 224 English majors, and concentrates on theirdifferences between high proficiency level group and low proficiency level group, inaddition to figuring out which factors influence the three components the bestrespectively. Among the students, 224 questionnaires are valid, and 10 of them areinvited to the interviews. This research adopts two methods, namely quantitative andqualitative methods, to answer its three research questions.At first, this part gives a conclusion of the major findings coming from thequantitative and qualitative studies. Secondly, it arrives at several implicationsaccording to the results. At last, the researcher puts forward some limitations of thecurrent research, and then offers some suggestions for further studies.

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Reference documents (omitted)

优秀英语论文范文篇二

Chapter 1 Introduction

Primary and secondary schools in China usually pide students according to their age. They learn as a group in a class at school. Th e fact that differences exist among students is indisputable, but the traditional class-based teaching system cannot really solve the issue on inpidual differences of students. For exam ple, there is always a h uge difference of students in English classes when they just enter junior middle school. This problem has always been troubling educators who teach Eng lish. It is o ne of the most dif ficulties in teaching.

1.1 Research Background

English teaching must be student-centered, which means it aims at the basic goal of all the students while respecting the level dif ference among them. The course has a certain selectivity in order to improve the correspond ing English ability of each student and to ensure students adapt to pers onal accomplishment during the modern development. These clearly point out that we should use different teaching strategies on students with dif ferent levels of English for a suitable developm ent of their learning. Many scholars and first-line English teachers have always been doing practic al researches on how to teach th e students with level difference. Since the 20th century, Hu Xinghong(2003) et al. first purposed the research on Stratified teaching. As the rese arch deepened, stratified teaching h as been developed in many regions in China. The author taught two grade 8 English classes in this school year. Since there were not m any students in the whole grade, the school did not use any form of stratified teaching. However from the analysis of the students’ actual situation, there was a large difference of English level between students even though there were only 33 students in each clas s. The difference between the highest and lowest grade was more than 80 points. T o compare vertically, the En glish level in m y school is average in the whole district. S tratified teaching ef fectively improves students’ English level, inpidualized teaching and improves the English level of the students who has poorer basic English. Stratified teaching creates more learning opportunities for the outstanding students, expands their learning content and strengthens their learn ing level and competitiveness. There is a profound significance in improving the competitive strength of the school in th e district and promote the popularity of the school.

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1.2 Research Significance

Through the practical research of S tratified English teac hing, it helps to increase students’ interest in English learning, promote classroom teaching efficiency, train students to have a good learning habit and lessens th e level gap between the students in order to improve students’ academic level. Teachers set corresponding English learning goals to the stud ents at each level under the premise of fully understanding the studen ts’ English ability . In English teaching, teaching strategy and teaching process are relevantly adjusted so that students at each level can learn well in class. Therefore, the unified English learning situation is changed, where the outstanding students can already understand English and the students at a lower level have to “accompany for study”. Through the im plementation of stratified English learning, the teacher m akes the students find pleasure in learning and become better at learning by whether improving the students’ subjective learning attitude or to further adjust a learning method, which helps to fully develop each student’s potential. The outs tanding students can achieve considerable development in English as their strong point. Not only does stratified teaching give students of different levels to learn and an opportunity for them to show their ability , it also gives different students further room to develop. Stratified teaching makes the students clearly understand that they have to continually pa rticipate and work hard for im provement. Therefore, it gives them the power of con tinuing development in their learn ing in the future.

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Chapter 2 Literature Review

2.1 Researches about Stratified Teaching aboard

Stratified teaching is acco rding to the students’ existing knowledge, ability and potential. It stresses that teaching should differ from student to student. Students tend to be scientifically pided into several groups of different level and receive different teaching. In the group o f similar level, under the teach ers’ proper strategy , they can get th e most interaction and best developm ent. The pis ion is a lways based on the inte lligence test scores and students' academic performance. At the beginning of the 20th century, stratified teaching was introduced into the school teaching. Since then, stratified classes has be come one of the m ain features in school education. Since 1916, the research of the strati fied teaching has also been launched a lot. However, the stratified teaching education in theoretical research is a controversial topic, which experienced a “saddle type” process of development. (Aiane Heacox: 2002) It started in America. In the early 20thcentury, the United S tates faced the influx of children of imm igrants. In order to educ ate these children of dif ferent background, education officials think it is necessary to pide them into groups based on their ability and past academic performance. By the 50s, almost all of the primary and high school students in Britain were assigned to the different classes according to ability. But it started to take criticism from all sides, thinking it streng thened the racial inequality , for the students of different levels don’ t take equal education, creating discrimination against “low-ability children”, and causing physical and mental suffer to them. And giving special care to “high ability children” is to breed their being too pound. At th e same time, stratified teaching enables students to deepen the gap between each other, easily causing social contradictions, and is a kind of undemocratic teaching organization form. Thus, stratified teaching faced a downturn. (Aiane Heacox: 2002)

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2.2 Researches about Stratified Teaching in China

The ideology of S tratified teaching originated from the view of “inp idualized teaching” in ancient China. The everlasting educational principle was proposed long ago by the great educator Confucius in “Analects of Confucius”. (Hua Guodong: 2002) Confucius established a set of classic educational system with inpidualized teaching. His educational thought, principle and m ethod was an im portant significance in Chinese and f oreign educational history. In the late 80s to early 90s, as quality-oriented education and entrance exam system emerged, “exam-oriented education” was required to improve the overall quality of students. The student body is ch anged from facing the key school (class) and prospective students. Meanwhile, since the n earest school system is im plemented for primary and junior m iddle school graduates w ho apply to seni or high, the structure of student source in various schools of all levels had a great change. The dif ference between students and the high requirem ent of educational quality required by the society promoted the development of Stratified teaching in China. Generally speaking, this period of S tratified teaching can be pided into two stages.(Wu Xiao’e:2006) Stage one is during the late 80s to the m id-90s. It sought theoreti cal basis, enriched Stratified teaching practice and executed new forms of Stratified teaching experiment. In 1989, the research group “Stratified teaching – Research on a Type of Teaching Strategy that Adapts to the Inp idual Difference in Students” was established with Qian Zaisen as the group leader and Zhang Shenyuan and Hu Xinghong(2002) as deputy leaders. It was a research on the education of junior middle school students with learning troubles.

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Chapter 3 Research Design ..... 15

3.1 Research Subjects ....... 15

3.2 Research Instruments .......... 15

3.3 Implementation Procedure .......... 16

Chapter 4 Data Collection and Analysis ......... 37

4.1 Results of Implementing Stratified Teaching ...... 37

4.1.1 Teachers’ and Students’ attitudes before and after Stratification.......37

4.1.2 Test Scores before and after Stratification .......... 38

4.2 Analysis of Results of Implementing Stratified Teaching ........... 42

Chapter 5 Conclusion ..... 44

5.1 Major findings .... 44

5.2 Implications ........ 44

5.3 Limitations .......... 45

Chapter 4 Data Collection and Analysis

4.1 Results of Implementing Stratified Teaching

Before implementation, teachers believe stratified teaching is good and can ef fectively improve students’ grade, but generally th ink it involves too much work. It will be h ard to control during class. If the le vels are not pided properly , it will af fect the stu dents’ performance. After implementation, almost all the teachers believe stratified teaching is an effective method. At the beginn ing, the series of stratifi cation works including teaching goals, students, teaching process and eval uation were tedious. All the teachers hope stratified teaching can be expanded to the range within the school. Everyone can gain experience and share the result. In particu larly the stra tification of materials of lesson preparation and evaluation can establish a data bank that can be shared, and thus reduce the related work by teachers. They believe that the stratified teaching works were tedious at the beginning, but after a phase and the works are fixed while the students form a certain habit, the works after that were in order and easier. Before implementation, students in experim ental class believe inp idual teaching is beneficial in increasing their grade and trai ning of various aspects. After im plementation, the classroom atmosphere is obviously more active compare to before. Students at all levels have a better sense of participation a nd better sense of group honor , creating mutual assistance in class and a harm onious atmosphere. On the basis of learning the textbook information well, level A students continually increase their reading which greatly improve their comprehension and analytic ability. Level B students find their insufficiency. Practice questions are given to them based on their w eakness and fill their gaps. The le vel of distance between them and level A students gradually become smaller. The learning attitude and habit of level C students have changed drastically. Basic knowledge is digested and has improved the students’ confidence in their English grade.

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Conclusion

This chapter shows the major findings of the experiment and some implications for the stratified teaching in junior high school. In addition, the limitations and suggestions are also list down, which include the enlightenment for further related studies. In this thesis, the author has carried out stratified teaching in junior middle school. The data have been collected through the test papers, interview and th e questionnaires. The results of the experiment shows that stratified teaching has great influence on the students' English achievements in the experiment class, and the students who instructed by stratified teaching have obvious im provement compared with the students who are taught with th e traditional patterns, so stratified teaching have some merits and necessity to implement. The findings are summarized as follows: Firstly, stratified teaching is more effective than the traditional teaching p attern in im proving the junior m iddle school English teaching. Through stratified teaching, students' English reading achievements in experiment class are higher than the students' in control class. Compared with the students in contro l class, the students in experim ent class obtain great improvement. To the author' s surprise, the elementary group has made great improvement on their original levels. The gap of students in experiment class has reduced. In experim ent class, th ere is a d istinctive difference between the pre-test and post- test. Secondly , stratified teaching increases the students ' learning interest and autonom y. Stratified teaching emphasizes the students' inpidual differences. It makes the teaching must be in ac cordance with the students' learning ability and other n on-intellectual factors so as to le t all th e students at d ifferent levels f eel the sense of success and are more interested in learning.

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Reference documents (omitted)

优秀英语论文范文篇三

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Background of the Study

As one of basic language skills in learning English, writing is of great importanceto reflect objectively the learner’s integrative language proficiency, and writinginstruction is considered to be the essential but most difficult part in English Teaching.How to improve writing instruction quality with effective teaching methods as well asscientific assessments has been a hot topic in the field of English education. Due to itsnature of being a process, writing instruction needs an overall and continuousassessment to validly examine the learner’s language proficiency.CollegesIt attached great importance to writing in Teaching Objectives for VocationalCollege with detailed requirements as follows: Non-English majors in VocationalColleges are expected to complete a composition based on a given topic (usually asimple practical writing, such as a form or document, a letter, resume or notice) of80-100 words within 30 minutes, to express the idea clearly without obvious errors informat, word-spelling, grammar or sentence structures. Nevertheless, currentlyspeaking, writing is an essential but the most difficult part in English instruction fornon-English majors in Vocational Colleges.

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1.2 Purpose and Significance of the Study

It can be seen that traditional summative assessment is actually the main coursefor the ineffectiveness of writing instruction for non-English majors in VocationalColleges. Therefore the current situation of writing instruction in Vocational Collegescalls for an overall and continuous assessment that is scientific and effective for areplace.This paper aims to seek for a more scientific and effective teaching methodtogether with a new scientific and effective assessment, to arouse the students’ interestand enthusiasm in English writing, cultivate their self-reflective thinking andautonomic learning, and thus to obtain the real objectives of teaching for Non-Englishmajors in Vocational Colleges.Different from the traditional summative assessment, formative assessment—anoverall and continuous assessment—is considered to be what we need being morescientific and effective with the focus on the process instead of the only result. Amongthe formative assessments, portfolios are one of the widely-applied and well-receivedinstrument. Generally speaking, a portfolio is a systematic collection of teacher’sobservations and students’ products to reflect the students’ efforts, progress anddevelopmental status in the process of learning (Paulson, F.L. Paulson, RR. andMeyer, CA,1991). It consists of the students’ writing samples, their self-assessment,their reflections, the peer feed-backs as well as the teacher’s feed-backs, in all ofwhich we can find obvious its advantages that can’t not be seen in traditionalsummative assessments.

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Chapter 2 Literature Review

This chapter is a review of literature drawn from some fields related to the study,which consists of four sections: 1) historical Background of Writing Assessment; 2)overview of portfolio-based assessment; 3) theoretical Foundations of the Study; 4)recent Studies of Portfolio-based Writing Assessment at home and abroad.

2.1 Historical Background of Writing Assessment

Modern educational assessment is said to have gone through four stages in theteaching field: measurement stage, description stage, judgment stage, and socialconstruction stage. (Yang Yijun, et. al., 1988)At the measurement stage (late 19th century--1930s) it is believed that “ anythingthat exists is in amount, and anything that exists in amount can be measured” (Wang1999) and put emphasis on standardized measurement of learners’ basic knowledgeand skills. In this stage learners are assessed by testing their learning results onlythrough their external behaviors, which is not sufficient for to obtain necessaryinformation on the scope of learners’ knowledge or the levels of their development.As representative of description stage, R.W. Tyler (1930s--1950s) conductedfamous “eight-year-study” and put forward a new assessment concept in the teachingfield. He believed that educational results are in the consistency with educationalgoals and stated it is of great importance of learners’ interest being stimulated,contents of textbooks being based on real life and cramming way of teaching beingreplaced by enlightening way. Since then it was considered that traditional tests fail totest learners’ psychological process and that knowledge-oriented instruction fails toachieve educational objectives.The judgment stage (1950s -- 1970s) focused on offering useful information fordecision-making and improvement, and believed that evaluation is aimed not to provebut to improve. (Popham, 1993)

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2.2 Overview on Portfolio-based Writing Assessment

In 1980s portfolios launched in western educational assessment as an alternativeapproach to traditional summative assessment. Since then portfolio-based writingassessment has attached great attention of both learners and educators as a new kindof qualitative assessment, where emphasis has shifted from product to process andfrom traditional to nontraditional measures of academic achievement and much moreconcern has been focused on the learners’ inner attitudes as well as their composingbehaviors in writing programs. Generally speaking, portfolio-based writingassessment is based on systematic collection of learners’ work samples to reflect theirlearning behaviors during the process so as to evaluate objectively andcomprehensively.Originally speaking, the term “portfolio” means an artist’s work which wasarranged thematically or chronologically to attract prospective customers. The artist’sportfolio is to hold the purpose to demonstrate the artist’s work in depth and breadthtogether with his or her interests and abilities. (see Moya. Sharon S. & L.M. O’Malley,1994). In the teaching field, portfolio is applied to provide a purposeful collection oflearners’ work with information about their attitude, emotion, efforts and progressduring the process of instruction. Portfolio assessment has been widely applied ininstructions at home and abroad for more than 20 years, but it is still difficult to give aprecise definition. Different scholars gave their own definitions out of differentperspectives.

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Chapter 3 Methodology and Research Design....24

3.1 Restatement of Research Questions......24

3.2 Participants........24

3.3 Instruments..........25

3.4 Procedures of Data Collection ......27

Chapter 4 Four Data Analysis and Discussion....32

4.1 Data Analysis and Discussion of Research Question 1.....32

4.2 Data Analysis and Discussion of Research Question 2.....34

4.3 Data Analysis and Discussion of Research Question 3.....40

Chapter 5 Conclusions, Implications and Recommendations.........46

5.1 Major Findings....46

5.2 Implications.........47

5.3 Limitations and Suggestions for Future Study.....49

Chapter 4 Data Analysis and Discussion

The above three chapters mainly presented the introduction, recent relativestudies and methodology of the study, and this chapter will focus on discussion onresults from writing tests, questionnaires and interviews, and analyzes them inaccordance with research questions in this study. This chapter consists of three parts,and each part relates to one research question respectively.

4.1 Data Analysis and Discussion of Research Question 1

Research Question 1: Can portfolio help non-English majors in VocationalColleges to change their attitude and beliefs toward writing?To answer this question, relative quantitative and qualitative data collected fromthe experiment will be analyzed as follows:First come data from the questionnaires on changes of the learners’ attitude andbeliefs towards English writing during the experiment this term. Both the descriptiveand Independent T test methods are applied during the research for this part.As is shown in Table 4.1, all the values of Sig. (2-tailed) for pretest questionnaireare much higher than 0.05 (p>0.05) , which means there is no statistical differencebetween the two classes in their attitude and beliefs towards English learning andwriting at the beginning. However at the end of the experiment there is significantdifference between CG and EG measured by Independent T-test in SPSS 19.0, wheremost of the values of Sig. (2-tailed) for the post-test questionnaire are less than 0.05(p<0.05). 85.7% of the students in EG become interested or strongly interested inEnglish learning and 65% in English writing, whereas only 20% of the students in CGinterested in English learning and 17.1% in English writing, as demonstrated by Item1 and 2 (p=0.000, <0.05). 45.7% of the students in EG have much or strongconfidence in their current ability of writing in English and 54.4% in the confidenceto improve their ability in the future, and in contrast there are only 20% and 14.9% inCG, as demonstrated by Item 6 (p=0.016, <0.05) and Item 7(p=0.000, <0.05). ForItem 4 although the value of Sig.

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conclusion

Based on major findings and limitations of this study, finally in the paper theauthor provides some recommendations for further research as follows:First, both the size of participants and time duration of this study can be enlargedand quantitative approaches can be employed to explore the relationship between thelearners’ development in portfolios and different aspects of their background toincrease the validity and reliability of the research. Therefore both more universal anddetailed results can be achieved to prove how portfolios affect the learners with moreobjective measures, such as their gender, age, areas of discipline, period of learningEnglish, level of English proficiency and so on.Second, the present study is mainly concerned with English writing but actuallyportfolios can be effectively conducted in other aspects of English learning.Feasibility of portfolios can be studied about listening, speaking and reading inlearning English in the future research. What’s more, the learners’ experience isfocused in this study, and more research can be undertaken for the perception of theeducators in the future.

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Reference documents (omitted)

优秀英语论文范文篇四

Chapter1 Introduction

English is a stress-timed language, and stress is its basic rhythm unit. It consists ofword stress, phrase stress and sentence stress. It takes the alternating appearance of thestressed and unstressed syllables as a rhythm. As for English native speakers, the position ofthe stress and the contrast between the stressed and unstressed sounds are the major factorsfor them to identify words through listening. While Chinese is a syllable-timed language, sothe syllable is the basic unit. With respect to word stress, there are many differences betweenthese two languages, which will be mentioned in the following analysis. Chinese Englishmajors need to pay much attention to the differences when they acquire English word stress.Once they make mistakes on the stress, they cannot easily get the proper meaning. As aresult, it is very important to learn English word stress well.Modern Language Typology proposed by famous American linguist Greenberg in1960s has become a theoretical model that has a far-reaching influence on modernlinguistics. The theories in Modern Typology have been broadly applied to studies ofSecond Language Acquisition. Traditional Typology classifies the world languages from theperspective of morphology. While cross-language studies made by the modern LanguageTypology, based on many factors, try to find out the relations among them and build theLanguage Variation model that is universally applicable.

Markedness Differential Hypothesis theory (1977) and the Structural ConformityHypothesis Theory (1991) are proposed by Eckman and are very popular theories in thestudy of the second language acquisition. It is a part of the Theory of Language Typology.The former is used to find out the differences and similarities among languages and try touse them to explain some mistakes made by students during their acquisition; the lattershows that rules that are applied to primary language can also be applicable to the secondlanguage. In this paper, Markedness Differential Hypothesis is used to analyze the differentmarkednesses between Chinese and English stress and within English word stress rules, sothat it can be used to explain the mistakes made by Chinese English majors when theyacquire English word stress; the Structural Conformity Hypothesis Theory is used to explainthe reasons why their four-year acquisition do not agree with their grades.The acquisition of English word stress has been studied by some scholars. They mainlyfocus on attributing the mistakes to the effects of Chinese word stress, and few people payattention to different markedness degrees between Chinese and English word stress rules.Besides, some scholars carried on empirical studies, but subjects were chosen randomly andthey were not consistent. This paper studies the markeness degrees of the two languagesfrom the perspective of language typological markeness theory to explain mistakes made byChinese English majors and choose certain subjects for four years, which can maintain theconsistence of the subjects as to provide a reliable and scientific result.

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Chapter 2 Literature Review

Language topological markedness theory has been studies by many scholars sinceit was proposed. Many learners apply it to many fields. The study on the acquisition ofEnglish word stress has been researched by many scholars from abroad and at home.This paper will review the related studied carried by former learners as to find a spaceto write this paper.

2.1 Literature review on language typological markedness theoryabroad and at home

In this part, the paper first reviews language typology from abroad and at home,which provides a basis for language typological markedness. Then, the author furthercontinues to review language typological markedness from abroad and at home tooffer an overall perspective.Traditional Language Typology started from Europe in 19th century. It mainlyclassifies the world languages from the perspective of morphology. Therefore, it isalso called Morphology Typology. Friedrich von Schlegel pided world languagesinto two kinds: agglutinating languages and inflexional languages. Friedrich’s brotherAugust von Schlegel added the third type: languages without affix and inflection. (Theexample he gave was Chinese.) Wilhelm von Humboldt added the fourth type:polysynthetic languages. Hereafter, the classification of languages was fixed. They areisolated languages, agglutinating languages, inflexiona1 languages and polysyntheticlanguages. The classification of the traditional language typology presents severaldisadvantages. First is that one language can show more than one features so that it isdifficult to classify them. Second is that this classification builds no connections withother features.

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2.2 Literature review on English word stress abroad and at home

In this section, the paper will review English word stress from abroad and athome. It will give a comprehensive and overall review on them and try makecomments on them to get a writing space.The systematic studies on English word stress began in 1950s, and developed in1960s-70s, which can be attributed to the development of the generative phonology. In1956, Chomsky, Halle and Lukoff ’s paper On Accent and Juncture in English studiedcompound words and phrases stress. John Hart (1966)was the first to study Englishstress. He generalized the features of English stress and discussed the changes ofstress in words and sentences. Many other scholars also studies the prosodic features,for example, Steel generalized five important distinctive features and named themintonation, quality, stress, pause and the degrees of press.In 1900s, scholars, like Bloomfield regarded stress with distinctive features assuprasegmental features and pided stress into several categories. In 1968, Chomskyand Halle worked together to complete the book The Sound Pattern of English, whichmeant that the Generative Phonology entered into the Standard Theory Period. Itdiscovered the rules of English word stress and made a comprehensive analysis aboutthe rules of the English word stress.

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Chapter 3 Research Design....16

3.1 Research subjects........16

3.2 Theoretical foundations.....16

3.3 Research methodologies....17

3.4 Research questions..... 18

3.5 Research instruments.........18

3.6 Research procedure.... 20

Chapter 4 Data Analysis........ 21

4.1 General analysis of records...... 21

4.2 General analysis of mistakes made on word stress..... 29

4.3 Analysis of Some Words....33

4.4 Analysis of some students’ records.........40

Chapter 5 Discussion.......47

5.1 Markedness differential hypothesis........47

5.2 Structural conformity hypothesis.... 56

5.3 Discussion on inpiduals.........60

Chapter 5 Discussion

In the preceding chapter, many data have been analyzed and have beensummarized into several aspects. In this chapter, the paper will apply the markednessdifferential hypothesis and structure conformity hypothesis to the analysis of theabove phenomena, and try to use them to explain the reasons why they made suchmistakes.

5.1 Markedness differential hypothesis

In the above chapter, the general situation of the students’ four-year acquisition ofwords stress and their mistakes categories have been analyzed from the perspective ofthe number of stresses and syllables that words hold and have been summarized intotables and figures. In this part, the theory will be applied to explain the tendency ofthem.As analyzed in table 4.4 and in table 4.3, it discusses the four-year word stressesfrom the number of the syllables and stresses that words embrace. It shows thatstudents made much more mistakes on polysyllabic words than on disyllabic words. Indetail, the mistakes on disyllabic words are less than that of on words with threesyllables, and the mistakes on words with three syllables are less than that of on wordswith four or five syllables. As for words with two stresses, students made moremistakes on words with two stresses, especially on secondary stress, which can beattributed to different markednesses within English words stress rules.

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Conclusion

On the basis of Language Typological Markedness theory, diachronically empiricalmethod and contrastive analysis are employed to analyze the four-year records of ChineseEnglish majors on English word stress. After analyzing the data, it summarizes thesituations into several aspects, then it applies the theory to the analysis of the situations.The findings of the paper are presented in the following.here is no relations between learning effects and learning time and there existsunconformity between students perception and production on word stress. Both can beexplained from the perspective of Structural Conformity Hypothesis. Because theacquisition of word stress follows the rules of natural languages, that is languagedevelopment is dynamic, nonlinear and complex, it shows fluctuation. Although they areseniors, their ability in word stress do not agree with their high proficiency in other aspectsof using English. Essentially, the reasons can be attributed to different markednessesbetween Chinese and English word stress rules. Different markednesses between the twolanguages cause troubles to students and thus their acquisition does not improves asexpected.

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Reference documents (omitted)

优秀英语论文范文篇五

Chapter 1 Introduction

Introduction is the first part of the study, presenting the whole picture of theresearch. It includes the research background which shows the reasons why theauthor conducted the research. It is then followed by the definition of CMC,introducing certain basic ideas and concepts of CMC and its features. Thesignificance of the study and the whole outline of the study are also presented inthis chapter.

1.1 Research background

Interaction plays an important role in second language acquisition(SLA), thusit becomes a hot topic in SLA. Constructive learning theory has had a tremendousimpact on teaching concepts and teaching methods since its introduction. At thesame time, the process approach, prominent by its interactive and learner-centeredfeatures, became popular in the western countries. It emphasized on learningprocess and gradually became the mainstream in language teaching. Constructivistshold that one of the teacher’s main tasks is to create a suitable learning environmentfor students to construct knowledge by themselves. Students construct knowledgeactively, not passively. However, traditional classroom language teaching which isoften teacher centered, can not provide sufficient time, space and opportunities forstudents to communicate and interact, let alone construct knowledge. Besides,traditional classroom teaching can cause students’ anxiety which might become apsychological barrier for language improvement. Students do not have a morerelaxing way to open their mouths to communicate with others and express theirideas freely in face-to-face interaction. Chinese students indicate that they may feelawkward when speaking English in front of their classmates. Furthermore, student’sautonomous learning can not be fully developed in traditional classroom teaching.It is claimed that teachers can also hardly monitor students’ language learning andgive sufficient feedback to students in traditional classroom language teaching.

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1.2 The definition of text-based CMC

Internet has many practical functions. The network, acting as the medium ofcommunication (computer-mediated communication, referred as CMC), is one ofthe important functions. The term of CMC was firstly used in 1990, and it wasaccepted widely after their introduction. CMC means a process facilitated bycomputer networks for people to express, exchange information and achievecommunication at end. Its main function is to facilitate communication amongpeople. Herring (1996) defined the CMC as communication via computer. Shestressed the importance of textual aspect of CMC and held that the main feature ofCMC was text-based.CMC can be pided into synchronous communication (SCMC) andasynchronous communication (ACMC). SCMC can allow participants to read orlisten the information, and immediately give responses to each other so as toachieve instant information exchanges. Its limitations are that all participants areasked to simultaneous online which is limited sometimes. ACMC avoids theshackles of time, and participants can log in at any time to exchange with each other.However, its interactive function is far less than SCMC due to the time delay.Paramskas (1993) viewed that synchronous communication was the most interactive.There are many internet apps nowadays, for example, qq, we-chat, micro-blog andso on. Those apps provide convenient ways for students to study, communicate andbetter improve their foreign language learning.In the early and middle period of 1990s, the application of text-based CMC inforeign language teaching was still in the exploration stage. Many foreign scholarsattempted to help foreign language learners to carry out text-based SCMC in orderto seek a new way of foreign language teaching. During this period, the mostrepresentative scholars in this research field were Chun (1994), Kern (1995) andWarschauer (1996). Their research results showed that text-based CMC had positiveeffects on language learning, mainly in language output quantity, language outputquality and participation of students when comparing with face-to-facecommunication. Since then, the status of text-based CMC was gradually established.From the late 1990s, the application of text-based CMC stepped into the stage ofdevelopment. More and more scholars showed strong interests in the field oftext-based CMC and related research results begun to emerge. At the beginning ofthe 21st century, researches on text-based CMC reached the peak, and there weremany domestic scholars applied the text-based CMC into usage.

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Chapter 2 Literature Review

The overall introduction of researches on text-based CMC will be presented inthis chapter. Then it focuses on the researches about text-based CMC home andabroad and factors influencing students’ language performance. The main findingsof corrective feedback, especially recast and prompts, will also be introduced. Acomprehensive evaluation about recast and prompts under the text-based SCMCwill also be discussed. As last, researches on students’ language accuracy in SCMCwill be introduced and evaluated.

2.1 Review of researches on CMC

The application of CMC in language teaching begun in the late 1980s, and theresearches on the impact of CMC on language learning started in the early 1990s.Since then, scholars have been conducting certain studies from different perspective,within which text-based CMC is mainly studied. This part will give a review ofresearches on CMC home and abroad, and affective factors that influence students’language performance. Researches about recast, prompts and language accuracy inCMC will also be introduced. As last, this paper will give an evaluation anddiscussion about the previous studies.

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2.2 Review of researches on corrective feedback

This part will introduce the researches on corrective feedback from home andabroad to give an overall picture of corrective feedback. It emphasizes on theresearches of recast and prompts to discuss the importance of the feedback underthe environment of networks.In general, feedback refers to the information that is given to second languagelearners by their instructors. The objectives of feedback is to assist students indeveloping their language performance. Feedback includes two kinds of elements,that is, evaluation and correction. The former is the assessment of students’language performance. The latter is the comment given to the learners on theirlanguage performance, and correction is often in all kinds of forms, such as,illustration, elicitation and repetition. CF tells students their errors in languageperformance and how to correct their errors. CF was adopted to assist students indiscovering and amending their errors, and it can be used in various areas. Scholarsbrought this idea into the field of linguistics. Lalande (1982) gave a definition offeedback as any procedure used to inform a learner where an instrumental responseis right or wrong and as responses to efforts by the learner to communicate. Basedon the all explanation of feedback, there are two means to give students commentson their inter-language, that is positive evidence and negative evidence. Thepositive evidence helps students by giving them grammatical modes of the secondlanguage, which eases the complex language items to furtherance the understandingof the target language. The negative evidence gives students the reverse part of thepositive evidence.

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Chapter 3 Theory Foundation and Methodology....20

3.1 Relevant theories of the study....20

3.1.1 Long’s interactive hypotheses...... 20

3.1.2 Noticing hypothesis......... 22

3.1.3 The Constructive theory.........25

3.2 Methodology.....26

Chapter 4 Results and Discussion......... 37

4.1 Results........37

4.2 Results of language accuracy..... 52

4.3 Discussion.........55

Chapter 5 Conclusion..........63

5.1 Major findings of the present study.........63

5.2 Implications...... 65

5.3 Limitations and suggestions....... 66

Chapter 4 Results and Discussion

This chapter will give the whole results of pretest and post-test, questionnairesand interviews. Besides, this chapter will present the results of language accuracyform the perspective of grammar accuracy, lexical accuracy and syntactic accuracy.Discussions of results will be followed at the end of this chapter, in which theeffects of recast and prompts on students’ lexical accuracy, grammatical accuracy,syntax accuracy will be discussed in detail, and it will also discuss the factorsinfluencing the students’ language accuracy performance in text-based SCMC.

4.1 Results

As stated in chapter 3, students were pided into the G1 and G2. G1 wasgiven the recast feedback and G2 was given the prompts feedback under thetext-based SCMC. They were required to take pretest and post-test, and their finalscores of language accuracy were input into the SPSS 16.0 to make data analysis inorder to compare the differences between the G1 and the G2. In this part,comparison between pretest and post-test in G1 and G2, and high-level students andlow-level students will be presented and analyzed in detail.This part will present the results of tests of both the G1 and G2. Subjects in theG1 and in the G2 were require to take pretest and post-test to make comparisons.By comparing with the results of pretest and post-test, the author can provide adeeper understanding of the effects of text-based SCMC on students’ languageperformance.

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Conclusion

Chapter 5 is the conclusion part of the whole thesis, aiming to summarize theresults and giving suggestions for second language teaching under the environmentof computer networks. It firstly presents major findings of the present study tointroduce the main results of the research. Then, it is followed by implications fromthe perspectives of theory and practice. As last, the author admits limitations of thestudy and provides suggestions for further studies.This study made an empirical research about the effects of recast and promptson students’ language accuracy in text-based SCMC, with a purpose of givingsuggestions for SLT and improvement of students’ language learning. On the basisof the results in chapter four, the major findings of the present study aresummarized as follows:First, recast has positive effects on students’ language accuracy in text-basedSCMC. As stated in chapter four, the difference of pretest and post-test is evident.Students in G1 had excellent performance in terms of grammar accuracy and lexicalaccuracy, because recast directly offers the right form of language to students,which is easy for students to grasp. However, if the recast is about new languageknowledge, students are confused about why teachers correct errors in that way.Thus, the effectiveness of recast, to some extent, depends on the students’understanding of the knowledge.Second, prompts is also valuable for improving students’ language accuracy intext-based SCMC. The data in chapter four shows that there is difference betweenthe pretest and the post-test of G2. Students in G2 made progress in the aspects ofgrammar accuracy and lexical accuracy. The inherent features of text-based SCMCgive prompts the function of meaning-negation which provides students theopportunities of self-repairing and outputting more accurate language forms.

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Reference documents (omitted)

优秀英语论文范文篇六

Chapter 1 Introduction

As one of the most influential linguistic theories in the modern world, Systemic Functional Grammar is a semantic and functional grammar with Metafunction Theory as its core part. Metafunction Theory is concerned with the functions of language and holds that language has three metafunctions, that are ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function. It is utilized into a wide variety of fields, such as language education, translation study and discourse analysis. In addition, it is considered to be a convenient and effective tool to analyze the literary works. As one of the most outstanding American Writers in the 20th century, Carson McCullers is a representative of the female writers in the South of America. Among her numerous works, The Member of the Wedding is regarded as her most mature novel. In order to provide a general research background for the thesis, this chapter will make a brief introduction of Carson McCullers and The Member of the Wedding, Systemic Functional Grammar and Metafunction Theory, the research motivation and significance as well as the structure of the thesis.

1.1 Carson McCullers and The Member of the Wedding

Carson McCullers was born in Columbus, Georgia on February 19, 1917 and died in Nyack, New York on September 29, 1967. Her father was an owner of a jewelry shop and her mother was a famous storyteller. Her family name was Smith and her original name was Lura Carson Smith, which was changed into Carson Smith by herself when she was 13 years old. In 1937, she married a soldier named Reeves McCullers and then her name became Carson McCullers. Carson McCullers began her journey of artistic career under the influence and encouragement of her mother. She had learned to play the piano from a teacher named Mary Tucker for many years since she was at the age of 5. She got along well with Mary Tuck and they became good friends. Therefore, when Mary Tuck left Columbus, McCullers decided to give up playing the piano and determined to be a writer rather than a pianist. Instead of being interested in traditional education, McCullers was keen on literature and read a number of books which were all great and famous literary works in the world. At the age of 17, she left Georgia and went to New York where she studied literary creation in Columbia University. During the years in New York, she encountered many celebrated and great literary giants who had great influence on her and played a significant role in developing her into an excellent writer.

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1.2 Systemic Functional Grammar and Metafunction

Theory Represented by M. A. K. Halliday, the School of Systemic Functional Linguistics is one of the most influential linguistic schools in the world today. On the basis of referring to the ideas of other linguistic schools as well as inheriting and developing the thoughts of Firth from London School, Halliday came up with the idea of Systemic Functional Grammar. After years of Halliday’s and other functional scholars’ efforts, the theory was developed and improved continuously and has become a widely accepted linguistic theory, which has significant influence on a variety of disciplines related to language, such as language education, translation, sociolinguistics and discourse analysis. In the process of founding and developing the theory, the ideas and thought from many linguistic schools have influence on Halliday’s view of language. Firth, who is not only the founder of London School but also the teacher of Halliday, has extremely significant effects on Halliday. Firth contended that both the meaning in the language and the social context producing parole were very important. Influenced by the language research of B. Malinowski, Firth emphasized the social context in which parole was used and he aimed to establish a linguistic theory according to Malinowski’s “context of situation.” Unfortunately, Firth did not realize this goal, but his ideas were developed by Halliday who came up with his own theory of language under the guide of Firth’s thought. In addition to Firth’s influence, Halliday also referred to the ideas and theories of other linguistic schools or linguists, such as the context theory of Malinowski, structure theory of Robin, the prototype theory, Prague School’s functional sentence, the language hypothesis and humanistic ideas from Sapir and Whorf, etc. Moreover, some Chinese scholars, such as Wang Li and Luo Changpei, also have influence on Halliday’s linguistic theory. Zhang Delu pointed out that Welter Simon, a professor teaching Chinese in London University also affected Halliday (Hu Zhuanglin, 2013: 70).

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Chapter 2 Literature Review

In order to present a detailed introduction of the previous studies and expound the necessity of the research, this chapter will summarize and review the studies on Carson McCullers and her novel The Member of the Wedding as well as Hallidays’ Metafunction Theory. As a figure of vital importance in the history of the 20th American literature, Carson McCullers has received extensive and persistent attention. Her works have also been studied by many literary critics and researchers. As for Halliday’s Metafunction Theory, it has been studied and developed by many scholars and widely applied to various aspects such as translation research, language teaching and discourse analysis.

2.1 Studies of Carson McCullers

The foreign critics’ attention on Carson McCullers began in the 1930s when she published her first short story Sucker in 1933, but she did not get much recognition at that time. In 1940, she published The Heart is a Lonely Hunter which was highly praised by the critics and won great success. She was regarded as the most exciting talent of that age by the critics. She successively published other classic works, such as Reflections in a Golden Eye, The Member of the Wedding, The Ballad of the Sad Café, and some short stories, which were also spoken highly of by the critics. However, McCullers was not always praised and affirmed but sometimes doubted and even seriously criticized. She published her last short story The March in 1967 which did not receive good evaluation and was deemed not to reach the artistic level of her masterpieces.

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2.2 Studies of The Member of the Wedding

As one of Carson McCullers’ representative works, the novel The Member of the Wedding has received extensive and significant attention since it was published in 1946. A number of studies on the novel have been carried out by the foreign critics and researchers. However, the number of the studies carried out by Chinese scholars is comparatively fewer because the novel was not translated into Chinese before 2005. Moreover, most of the studies focused on McCullers’ other two novels: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and The Ballad of the Sad Café. According to the focal points, the studies on The Member of the Wedding can be pided into four types: studies on theme, gender identity, gothic style and other aspects. Therefore, the following content of this section will review the research situation from the four aspects and point out the problems of those studies.

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Chapter 3 Theoretical Framework and Methodology ........ 25

3.1 Metafunction Theory ........... 25

3.1.1 Ideational Function .... 25

3.1.2 Interpersonal Function ....... 28

3.1.3 Textual Function ........ 31

3.2 Methodology ....... 33

Chapter 4 Thematic Interpretation with Metafunction Theory ........ 37

4.1 Ideational and Textual Interpretation of Solitude and Isolation .......... 37

4.1.1 Transitivity Interpretation .......... 37

4.1.2 Thematic and Information Structural Interpretation ......... 44

4.2 Ideational and Interpersonal Interpretation of Female Initiation Theme .... 50

4.3 Ideational Interpretation of Searching for Self-Identity ...... 61

4.4 Interpersonal Interpretation of Family-Affection Deficiency ..... 65

Chapter 5 Conclusion ..... 71

5.1 Major Findings .... 71

5.2 Limitations and Implications ....... 73

Chapter 4 Thematic Interpretation with Metafunction Theory

As one of Carson McCullers’ representative works, The Member of the Wedding reflects her artistic achievements and contains multiple themes which are solitude and spiritual isolation, the female initiation, searching for self-identity as well as family-affection deficiency. As the principal part of the thesis, the chapter will conduct a detailed interpretation of the four themes from the aspects of ideational, interpersonal and textual functions, and demonstrates the realization of the themes on the basis of text analyses.

4.1 Ideational and Textual

Interpretation of Solitude and Isolation Carson McCullers is famous for depicting solitude and her works are full of people who are solitary and isolated. The theme of solitude and spiritual isolation is throughout her works, including the novel The Member of the Wedding. The novel mainly shapes three characters: the protagonist Frankie, her little cousin John Henry and the black maid Berenice. Frankie’s mother died when she was very young and her father does not give her too much love and care. Although the maid Berenice takes care of her like a mother, Frankie always feels lonely and is not accepted by others. She cherishes the dream of going around the world, but has to spend the days of the summer in the small and dark kitchen with her cousin and Berenice. In Frankie’s world, every lonely people are locked in their own inner space and unable to make any meaningful communication.

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Conclusion

The Member of the Wedding is regarded as Carson McCullers’ most mature novel which includes multiple themes. Based on the review of the previous studies on the novel, the thesis explores the themes of the novel on the theoretical basis of Halliday’s Metafunctional Theory with the purpose of examining the advantages of Halliday’s theory on the thematic study of literary works and presenting a more objective and comprehensive study on the themes of the novel. As a conclusion part, this chapter will summarize the major findings, the limitations of the study and suggestions for the future research.In order to make an objective and clear interpretation of the themes in the novel The Member of the Wedding from the aspects of Halliday’s three metafunctions, the thesis first presents an introduction on the research background, the motivation and significance as well as the layout of the thesis. The literary review summarizes and reviews the foreign and domestic studies on Carson McCullers, the novel as well as Halliday’s Metafunction Theory in order to provide a detailed understanding of the research situation and illustrate that the study has a certain degree of feasibility and innovativeness. The theoretical and methodological chapter, which introduces the three metafunctions, the research methods and the process of text selection and analysis in detail, lays a foundation for the thematic interpretation in the following chapter. Through the ideational, interpersonal and textual analyses of the selected texts from the novel in the fourth chapter, the themes of the novel are interpreted more objectively, clearly and comprehensively. The major findings of the research are as follows.

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The reference (omitted)

优秀英语论文范文篇七

Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Choice and Purpose of the Thesis

Joseph Conrad（1857-1924), is one of the most influential writers in the world, occupying a significant position in the late 19th century and the early 20th century English literature. He is acknowledged as a master of literature who creates in English. Generally speaking, Conrad’s novels can be pided into political novels, jungle novels and marine novels. Since the publication, Conrad’s works have attached worldwide attention. Up to now, there have been different kinds of comments about his works. In China, many scholars also pay much attention to Conrad in recent years. His novels have been interpreted from various perspectives, such as, Modernism, Feminism, and Symbolism. The concept of salvation originates from the western religion and is regarded as the core concept of the Bible. Therefore, the salvation motifs always appear in the literature and become an important and eternal motif in the literature. Conrad also pays much attention to the salvation motifs. However, few studies focus on the salvation motifs in Conrad’s jungle novels. To some extent, all western writers are influenced by the Bible and Conrad is not an exception. Due to his unique life experiences and the influence of social environment in Victorian era, Conrad forms unique salvation thoughts. In terms of the theme of his works, many scholars relate Conrad with colonialism. Some of them believe that Conrad is an anti-colonial writer. Some of them also hold the idea that Conrad’s attitudes towards colonialism are ambiguous and ambivalent. Based on the study of the salvation motifs in Conrad’s jungle novels, it can be found that Conrad is not completely against the colonialism. On the contrary, to some extent, Conrad beautifies the colonialism in his jungle novels. The focal point of this thesis is from the perspective of salvation, which is a relatively new perspective among the researches on Conrad. The thesis can provide some new references for the studies on Conrad and can also help us to read Conrad in a comprehensive way. Conrad’s attitude towards colonialism has always been a controversial topic, causing a wide attention in English and American literature. The study of the salvation motifs in Conrad’s jungle novels can help us to interpret his attitudes of colonialism. The purpose of the thesis is to solve such questions as how the salvation motifs are embodied in Conrad’s novel; what is the essence of the salvation motifs.

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1.2 Introduction of Joseph Conrad and His works

Joseph Conrad, born on December 3, 1857, is regarded as a very significant writer in English literature. Conrad’s father Apollo Korzeniowski is a famous and revolutionary polish patriot who is considered as a revolted activist by the authority at that time. Conrad has a miserable childhood. His mother dies when he is only 8 years old. Four years later, his father also dies. The little Conrad becomes an orphan and is raised by his guardian named Bobrowski, his mother’s brother. Conrad’s family is a Polish gentry but it ends as a broken family finally. The changes give Conrad significant impacts and force him to start his new life at sea. What’s more, when Conrad is only 15 years old, he expresses his desire to seek for a new life at sea. Conrad works at sea for many years, which broadens his horizons and pays the foundation for his writing. In terms of the achievement in literature, Conrad is a genius. Though he is a Polish British writer and English is not his native language; however, he has written many famous English novels in his life and some of them are also classified as classics in literature. Conrad begins to write works in his late years. Conrad’s writing career can be pided into three periods. The early creation is mainly based on his sea experiences and the colonial Malaya. The most famous work during the first period is Conrad’s Malay trilogy, Almayer’s Folly, An Outcast of the Islands and The Rescue. As to this period, Wang Shouren points that Conrad criticizes the Colonialism by describing the moral defects of the white people but Conrad also holds to his fixed point of the view (Wang Shouren, 2008:4).

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Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 Relevant Studies on Conrad abroad

By 1930，Richard Cure and Granville Hicks noted a decline in Conrad’s reputation. In the essay Conrad and the Younger Generation, Cure remarks that the younger generation regarded Conrad as an exotic spirit rather than as a serious novelist. Hick, in the article Conrad after Five Years suggests that Conrad’s reputation is shrinking because he is not a sociological novelist and is perceived to be a writer of Romance and adventure rather than the philosophical novelist that he was (Peters, 2008: 121).The main argument of Conrad in 1930s is whether Conrad is a philosophical writer or not. It is not until the 1940s that Conrad rebuilds his reputation and the foreign studies on Conrad enter into a new stage. In this period, some scholars begin to keep an eye on Conrad. Some critics struggle for rebuilding Conrad’s reputation. The most significant figure in the recovery of Conrad’s reputation is Morton Dauwen Zabel, arguing that Conrad’s reputation needs to be established once more on a firm foundation. Later, in the well-known introduction to The Portable Conrad (1947), marking the permanent recovery of Conrad’s reputation, he further argues that Conrad is a novelist of moral insight, who imposes moral experience on the structure of his plots (Peters, 2008: 121). Zabel deals with the psychological aspect of Conrad’s writing as well as the inextricable nature of form and content in his works, which lays foundation for the Conrad study. Other figures also fight for the recovery of Conrad’s reputation, for instance, in 1941, F. R. Leavis published a series of review articles called Revaluations: Joseph Conrad on Scrutiny. This event marks the study on Conrad starting to get the attention of British academic field. The 1950s is an important period of Conrad’s great revival. During this period, Guerad makes insight introduction to the Signet edition of Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer. Robert Penn Warren publishes the famous introduction to the Modern Library edition of Nostromo, and he argues that Conrad’s is a philosophical novelist.

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2.2 Relevant Studies on Conrad in China

The domestic study of Conrad is closely related to the translation of Conrad’s novels. From 1920s to1950s, the domestic study is mainly on the translation of Conrad’s novels. In 1931 and 1934, Liang Yuchun, translated Conrad’s Youth and Lord Jim. Yuan Jiahua translated some other novels of Conrad, such as The Nigger of the “Narcissus”, Typhoon. In this period, Lao She speaks highly of Conrad and admits that his writings were also influenced by Conrad. Recent years witness the development of the studies on Conrad in China. Most of the studies are focused on Conrad’s marine and jungle novels. The book History of Modern English Fiction, published in 1985 by Professor Hou Weirui, introduced Conrad’s artistic view systemically and the book is still an important book for the Conrad study. In 1994, Professor Wang Zuoliang published the book The Twentieth English Literature in which he mainly discussed Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim and Conrad’s political trilogy. The book points out that Conrad’s greatest contribution is his revelation of the modern civilized society and the analysis of the modern psychological activity. Other publications also discuss Conrad and his works, showing that Conrad is getting more and more attention in the domestic academia.

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Chapter Three The Embodiments of Salvation Motifs ..... 15

3.1 Human’s Sins in Lord Jim ..... 15

3.2 The Atonement in Lord Jim ......... 21

3.2.1 Jim’s Moral Dilemma ....... 22

3.2.2 Jim’s Moral Discovery ...... 24

3.2.3 Jim’s Death for Eternal Life ........ 27

3.3The Sins in Heart of Darkness ..... 29

3.4The Atonement in Heart of Darkness ....... 37

3.4.1 Kurtz’s Atonement ....... 38

3.4.2 Marlowe’s Self-reflections ..... 39

Chapter Four The Development of the Salvation Motifs ........ 42

4.1 From the Inpidual Salvation to the Group Salvation .......... 42

4.2 From Physical Salvation to Spiritual Salvation ......... 49

4.2.1 Jim’s Physical Salvation ......... 50

4.2.2 Spiritual Salvation of the Colonists Represented by Kurtz ......... 51

Chapter Five The Sources of Conrad’s Salvation Thoughts ........ 53

5.1 Personal Factors ......... 52

5.2 Social Factors ...... 58

Chapter Six The Essence of Salvation Motifs

Conrad is a world-influential novelist with strong sense of social responsibility. He not only tries his best to realize the artistic value of the works but also pays more attention to the enlightening function of the novel. In his jungle novels, the clues of salvation motifs are very clear. In his representative works of jungle novels Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness, Conrad shows the alienated and distorted human nature, which also makes readers reflect human’s behaviors. Conrad also shows the protagonists’ awakening of their sins and the difficult process of their salvation, which shows Conrad’s expectations towards human’s future and the wishes of the human society. However, any writer is a product of a specific era and can’t get rid of the influence of society completely. The salvation motifs in his jungle novels are just a superficial phenomenon. Actually, by showing the salvation motifs, Conrad shows his acquiescent attitudes of colonialism, which is the essence of the salvation motifs in his jungle novels.

6.1 Conrad’s Acquiescent Attitudes to Colonialism

Conrad lives in a period of heyday of imperialism and witnesses kinds of colonial deeds. His Congo journey pays the foundation for the writing of Heart of Darkness which is usually recognized as a thorough satire of the colonists. In his jungle novels, Conrad relentlessly reveals the imperialism and the colonialism of the western whites. However, it should be pointed that the protagonists’ salvation process shows that Conrad still can’t completely get rid of the traditional sense of European superiority. In the 19th, the western colonists believe that they are the best and the perfect species because only they can conquer the world. It seems that the whites are born with nobleness and Europe is the only center of the world. The white color gives the colonists a sense of superiority to other colors, especially the black. In Conrad’s jungle novels, some plots in his jungle novels and the words he uses shows that Conrad also defends the legitimacy of the colonialism to a certain degree.

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Conclusion

Human’s salvation is a difficult process in which human experiences the depravity, atonement and rebirth. In Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness, Conrad fully shows the whole process of the salvation and how the salvation motif develops. The major findings of this paper can be concluded as follows. Firstly, Conrad provides us with two clear clues to understand the human’s salvation process. One is the human sins. The human sins are the roots of the salvation. In Lord Jim, the human sins mainly include the failure of resisting temptation at critical moments and the moral depravity. In Heart of Darkness, the numerous sins of the colonists are represented by Kurtz, such as the greed of excessive wealth and the absolute power, the cruel rule, the lust of expanding territories. The other clue is the human’s atonement for their sins. Jim spares no efforts to achieve his moral redemption and the final death can be seen a rebirth of his moral. In spite of the numerous sins, Kurtz’s last words on the edge of his death show the colonists finally realize their wrong behaviors and achieve his salvation. Secondly, Conrad also shows us that human’s salvation is a process of continuous development. There are two aspects of the salvation development in Conrad’s jungle novels. One is from the inpidual salvation to the group salvation. The salvation in Lord Jim is an inpidual salvation. Jim’s awakening of the conscience and the salvation is only an inpidual behavior. Compared with Jim, other whites don’t feel sinful for their wrong deeds. On the contrary, they all take their wrong behaviors for granted. The salvation in Heart of Darkness is a group salvation, because Kurtz is a typical of the colonists.

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The reference (omitted)

优秀英语论文范文篇八

Chapterl Introduction

The earliest research on donkey sentences was dated back toChrysippos-sentences by Stoic philosopher Chrysippos in the fifth century, with arenaissance in the early 1980s when linguists found out that the formal semanticscannot offer a reasonable explanation towards this language phenomenon. Ever since,there have been mass discussions on the two types of donkey sentences^ namely,conditional sentences and relative clauses. The intensive issue with regard to theirforms particularly concerns indefinite NPs and pronouns with which they are relatedto in sentences like (1) and (2), while the debate embracing the nature has to do withanaphor, quantification, scope and binding (Geach 1962; Lewis 1975;-Evans 1977,1980; Kamp 1981; Heim 1982,1990; Kadmon 1987; Kratzer 1995; Chierchia 1992,2000).(1).......If a fanner owns a donkey, he beats it.(2).......Eveiy fanner who owns a donkey beats it.In Mandarin Chinese, since Cheng & Huang(1996) identified certain types ofconditionals as Chinese donkey sentences,several other accounts are offered(Linl996; Pan and Jiang 1997; Wen 1996,1997; Chierchia 2000;Huang 2003; Wen2006),which naturally fall into four classifications according to their pisions ofChinese donkey sentences, namely, two types of donkey conditionals, one type ofdonkey conditionals, three types of donkey sentences, and a wh-...wh- correlativestructure.

1.1 The Purposes and Significance of the Study

The main purposes of the present study are to investigate the acquisition of thedonkey sentences in Mandarin-speaking children of different ages and to discuss thetypes of donkey sentences in Mandarin Chinese from the child language acquisitionperspective.A number of studies have put emphasis on the classification and interpretationof donkey sentences in Chinese. However, there is no specific empirical investigationon child language acquisition. Using a truth value judgment task,Grain & Thornton(2000) tested children's understanding of both relative-clause and conditional donkeysentences. Even though there are abundant of theoretical studies on the donkeysentences in Mandarin Chinese, there is no consistent view on the types of donkeysentences yet. Knowledge of language cannot be porced from language acquisition.The principles that constitute knowledge of language must therefore relate toacquisition (Cook & Newson 2000). The present study therefore attempts to obtainthe empirical evidence and explore child's first language acquisition of donkeysentences in Mandarin Chinese.

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1.2 Organization of the thesis

The thesis consists of six chapters.Chapter One is the introduction part in which purposes and significance of thestudy are briefly introduced.Chapter Two briefly reviews the previous literature on the donkey sentences inEnglish and Chinese, including theoretical backgrounds and empirical studies.Chapter Three involves the detailed description of the research design andmethodology of the present study, including the research questions, the subjects, themethods and the procedure.Chapter Four reports in details the experimental results by analyzing thecollected data with SPSS Statistics 19.0.Chapter Five gives a brief discussion on the results.Chapter Six is the conclusion part, in which major findings are displayed. Thenthe implications and limitations of the current study as well as some suggestions forfurther study are put forward.

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Chapter 2 Literature Review

Donkey sentences in Mandarin Chinese, which is an important languagephenomenon that cannot be ignored, has aroused great interest in linguisticresearches since 1996. A great number of studies devoted to donkey sentences havebeen conducted from the aspect of quantification, scope and anaphora. However, theresearch on the child language acquisition of donkey sentences in Mandarin Chineseis a new field, and little specific research has been done on this topic. In this chapter,tiie author will briefly review the theoretical and empirical studies of donkeysentences.

2.1 Theoretical Studies on Donkey Sentences

In English there are two types of donkey sentences: one is conditional donkeysentences as (1), and the other is relative clause donkey sentences as (2). Heim (1982)has given an explicit definition of them:Donkey sentences are sentences that contain an indefinite NP which isinside an if-clause or relative clause,and a pronoun which is outside thatnif-clause or relative clause,but is related anaphorically to the indefinite NP(Heim 1982: 44).According to Heim's definition, a critical characteristic of donkey sentences canbe derived: there exists an anaphoric relation between a pronoun and its indefiniteNP antecedent,though the pronoun is beyond the syntactic scope of that indefinite.The other defining chmacteristie of donkey sentences is the universal reading ofindefinites.Beginning with Heim (1982) and Kamp (1981),and continuing through currentversion of Discourse Representation Theory (DRT) (e.g. Kamp and Reyle 1993),linguistic analyses of donkey sentences have had two main goals: one goal is toprovide a semantics that assigns the same truth conditions to both relative-clause andconditional donkey sentences?,tiie other is to ensure that the truth conditions forsentences of both types correspond to the strong reading,according to which everyfarmer feeds every donkey that he owns (Groenendijk and Stokhof 1991). (On theweak reading, each farmer must feed at least one of the donkeys he owns,he mayfeed them all, but this is not required for the sentence to be true.) Heim achievesthese goals by treating the universal quantifier as an "unselective binder,,. In therelative-clause donkey sentences like (2), the universal quantifier is taken tounselectively bind nominal, namely the farmer and donkey. As a result,therelative-clause donkey sentences can get the same readings as conditional donkeysentences like (1), i.e. they both get the strong readings.

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2.2 Child Acquisition Studies on Donkey Sentences

If there are distinctions to be drawn between relative-clause donkey sentenceand conditional donkey sentences, as Chierchia suggested, then we csm expectchildren to distinguish them more clearly than adults,for the following reasons.Adults' judgments about the alternative interpretation of ambiguous sentences maybe easily influenced by general world knowledge. Acquiring such knowledge requires experience. Because children's experience is more limited,their judgmentsshould not be subject to the influence of general world knowledge to the same extentas adults' judgments. If so,children's judgments may directly reflect basic principlesof the language apparatus.Grain and Thorthon (2000) conducted an experiment designed to test children'sunderstanding of both conditional donkey sentences like (1) and relative-clausedonkey sentences like (2),using a variant of the Truth Value Judgment Task. Theexperiment showed that children did not treat the two types of donkey sentences alike.With relative-clause targets,all children demonstrated that the weak reading wasavailable in their grammars; no child required the strong interpretation for allrelative-clause. By contrast, with conditional targets, the responses by inpidualchildren were extremely consistent: the child either assigned the weak reading on alltrials or assigned the strong reading on all trials.

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Chapter 3 Experiment.......21

3.1Research Questions......21

3.2Research Method.......23

3.3Participants.......25

3.4Stimuli.......26

3.5Procedure.............28

3.5.1The Pilot Study.......30

3.5.2The Formal Study.......30

Chapter 4 Results.............32

4.1Results of the Adult Group...........33

4.2Results of the Filler Sentences...........35

4.3Results of the Experiment Groups............38

4.3.1 Group Results..........40

Chapter 5 Discussion

From Chapter 4,we can see that children's performance differs from that of theadults in the existential context. In this chapter,we will discuss the results from thefollowing aspects: the types of donkey sentences,the two readings of donkeysentences and the distribution of wA-words.

5.1 Discussion on the Types of Donkey Sentences

According to the previous study,Cheng & Huang (1996) think that there aretwo types of donkey sentences: bare conditionals and ruguo-conditionals. WhileHuang (2003) believe that there is only one type of donkey conditionals. In Cheng &Huang's theory,we can predict that adults should treat the two types different. And inHuang's theory, we can predict that adults will not distinguish the two types ofdonkey sentences. In this point, from the prediction of adults' interpretation, we alsocan infer that in Cheng & Huang's theory, children will distinguish the two types ofdonkey sentences,while in Huang's theory,children will treat the two types ofdonkey sentences alike.In our experiment, the statistical analysis between bare conditionals andruguo-conditionals showed that there was no significant difference in theinterpretations of the two types of donkey sentences. The result reflects that bothchildren and adults treated bare conditionals and ruguo-conditionals alike. Thenon-distinctive interpretation of two donkey sentences in our experiment may be areflection of Huang's (2003) theory that there is only one type of donkey sentence inChinese. She gives a unified account that Chinese donkey anaphora can be obtainedby appealing to the Discourse Representative Theory. In a word, our experimentalresults indicated that the two types of donkey sentences can be interpreted in asimilar way.

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Conclusion

The present study is a tentative research on the child acquisition of donkeysentences in Mandarin Chinese. In this final chapter, major findings of the presentstudy are summarized. Then implications and limitations of the present study andsuggestions for future research are put forward.The present study is an attempt to explore the acquisition of donkey sentences inMandarin Chinese. The major findings are that: (1) both the children and the adultsdid not distinguish the bare conditionals and ruguo-conditionals; (2) children did nottreat the two readings of donkey sentences like adults: adults only accepted theuniversal reading, while both the universal and existential readings were available tochildren. Children preferred the universal reading in universal context and preferredexistential reading in existential context; (3) the different positions of wh-words hadno effect on children's understanding; (4) after 5 years old,children performed moreadult-like in interpretation of the donkey sentences.From the major findings,we can draw the following implications.Firstly, the present study provides an empirical evidence for the argument of thedifferent classification about the donkey sentences in Chinese. Since there is nosignificant difference between ruguo-conditionals and bare conditionals, we cananalyze the two types of donkey sentences in the same way since they convey thesame meaning.

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The reference (omitted)

优秀英语论文范文篇九

Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Motivation of the Study

News, as part of life, plays an important role in everyday life, brings the world to the front of people. People get the information they need mostly from news. As a special kind of discourse, news usually contains the news headline and detailed content. People usually focus their attentions on the headlines at the first sight, therefore, as the eye of news, headlines have become more and more important to the news in the modern society. A successful headline can decide the destiny of news directly. With the coming of information age, the competition of mass media becomes increasingly fierce. In order to attract audiences’ attention, the distinctive headlines are necessary, and the rhetorical device is necessary to a distinctive headline. Through the analysis, people find that rhetorical devices are common used in the news headlines. Rhetorical devices bring infinite surprise to people in invisible ways. A successful headline is usually illustrated by one kind of rhetorical device. In a word, it is peculiarity in that we cannot make out its meaning without certain context. The peculiarity of news headlines have attracted many Chinese scholars, who have done many related researches from different perspectives. They analyze news headlines in every concrete field, like aesthetics, sociology, and linguistics and so on. For linguistics, many linguists study news headlines from different perspectives under the framework of linguistic theories. The previous related researches about the news headlines are mainly about their rhetorical devices, pragmatic features, functions, cognitive features, and so on. Just like a coin has two sides, each theory has its advantages, and also limitations. The researches based on functions only emphasize the problem on single level; the researches based on the pragmatic features only focus on communicative level; the researches based on the rhetorical features explain news headlines superficially, but not study the inner operation mechanism; the researches based on the Cognitive Linguistics offers a new way to news headlines, which can explore the cognitive mechanism, however, it can not be well explained without rhetoric devices, for they play a very important role in the news headlines; there are only two papers based on the Cognitive Rhetoric, but they all do not analyze the the rhetorical devices used in the news headlines.

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1.2 Objectives of the Study

Rhetorical strategy, as a special kind of cognitive method, new approaches should be developed to explore its cognitive mechanism. The present study aims at explaining the cognitive mechanism of rhetorical strategies in the headlines of Legal Report, by amending the ECM aided by the context situation and Rhetoric for the purpose of a comprehensive and profound understanding of rhetorical strategies. It is hoped that this thesis could be constructive and effective to find out a new approach for people to interpret rhetorical devices. This thesis embraces the following goals. Firstly, it aims to give an analysis of the cognitive mechanism of rhetorical strategies in light of integrated CRE framework. Secondly, it aims to present a dynamic explanation of rhetorical strategies, rather than the traditional static one. Thirdly, it aims to prove the feasibility and necessity of CRE model with a closed data corpus as its support. Fourthly, it makes an attempt to provide a large number headlines with rhetorical strategy and classify them to do case study in order to be more comprehensive and detailed. Lastly, it aims to point out the limitations of CRE model and offer suggestions for further study.

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Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 Rhetorical Approach to News Headlines

Rhetoric study has a long history, and news headlines have been studied by many scholars from the rhetorical approach. They have shown great interests in the study of the rhetorical devices from the rhetorical perspective. Scholars analyze the rhetorical devices from different angels, there are some scholars classified the rhetorical devices used in the news headlines into different types. Such as Liu Chi (2010), Shen Chune & Lei Yang (2010) discuss the rhetorical devices used in the news headlines, such as metaphor, personification, metonymy, she-wen, fan-wen, contrast, parody, duality, pun and each rhetoric device is close to the key point of the article. Rhetorical devices can rich the language, therefore, it refers to a kind of art. And some scholars study the art of rhetorical devices in the news headlines, Wang Danrong & Zhu Jingjing (2010)) study the rhetorical art of news headlines, in this paper, the author analyze the metaphor, she-wen, repetition, contrast, and some other rhetorical devices with case study, it also points out the multi-dimensional use of news headlines. There are some scholars research the rhetorical devices used in the news headlines from the overall view. They try to fill the gap of traditional rhetorical theories and make a summary about the previous researches. Yin Linan (2008) summarizes the researches about rhetoric nearly last decade about headlines. Cognitive Rhetoric has a lack of systematic research, the previous researches are mainly about the news and advertising headlines. This paper argues that headline is the eyes of news, the practical use of rhetorical devices can make the headlines considerably. Therefore, some scholars choose the news headlines in newspapers and magazines as their study objects. Chen Yanping (2011) analyzes the art of rhetoric with the news headlines in the “Xi’an Evening News”, Peng Wenfeng (2009) analyzes the the art of rhetoric with the headlines from the “Guangzhou Daily” and “Metropolis News”, Yi Lin (2007) analyzes the news headlines from “Sina Sports” from the perspective of rhetoric, Lai Ruzhuo (2006) analyzes the integrated features and rhetoric applications of English News Headlines on Internet, they all point out the importance of news headlines, admit the the use of rhetorical devices can enhance the expressiveness of the headline. In this kind researches, specific rhetorical devices will be explained with case from the view of Rhetoric, such as metaphor, metonymy, fan-wen, parody, and so on. However, they all just study the superficial operation mechanism about rhetorical devices, rather than the underlying one.

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2.2 Functional Approach to News Headlines

As a particular kind of discourse, news headlines have been studied from different perspectives, there are many scholars make a study about the news headlines from the view of function. News headlines can be considered as an unique type of discourse, expressing the most important information and playing a very important role in encoding and decoding process of news discourse. There are some scholars make a study about the function of news headlines. The “function” here means the realization of purpose of news headlines. Chu Jun & Zhou Jun (2006) research the functions of news headlines and point out The headline is a perfect combination of language features, aesthetic function and pragmatic function. Xu Changming (2013) discusses the realization of functions in news headlines. News headlines have the double functions, one is to sum up the news content with limited words, the other is to attract the audiences’ interests. News headlines achieve the purposes through vocabulary, grammar and rhetorical devices. There are some other scholars make a study about news headlines from the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics, and the “function” here refers to the professional term from Linguistics. Wang Geng (2007) analyzes the sports headlines from the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics. The author points out that News headlines have the general function and interpersonal function, one connects headlines and news content, and the other links headlines and audiences. Except for this paper, Zhang Xiaoling (2009) analyzes English newspaper headlines from the view of System Functional Stylistic. The article analyzes the headlines from three aspects of physical systems, tone systems and thematic system, and summarizes the features of English newspaper headlines with comparison.

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Chapter Three Theoretical Framework....15

3.1 Theoretical Background......15

3.1.1 The Emergence of Cognitive Rhetoric and Its Limitations......15

3.1.1.1 The emergence of Cognitive Rhetoric....15

3.1.1.2 Its limitations.......18

3.1.2 ECM and Its Limitations.........19

3.1.3 The Necessity of Context of Situation..........22

3.2 Theoretical Framework: CRE....25

3.3 Summary....29

Chapter Four Data Analysis and Discussions....31

4.1 Data Collection and Description..........31

4.2 The Explanatory Power of 13 Rhetorical Strategies via CRE.......34

4.3 Distribution of Rhetorical Strategies in News Headlines........47

4.4 Distribution of Rhetorical Strategies on Different Levels.......48

4.5 Summary.....53

Chapter Five Conclusion........54

5.1 Contributions and Significance.......54

5.2 Limitations and Suggestions of the Thesis..........55

Chapter Four Data Analysis and Data Discussion

As we have already mentioned, rhetorical strategies are common used in news headlines, however, the traditional researches about news headlines attach more attention to its function, pragmatic features, rhetorical features and so on, rather than its cognitive rhetorical features. Therefore, this thesis proposes CRE model to analyze the cognitive mechanism of rhetorical strategies in news headlines. This chapter will apply this cognitive model to the analysis of cognitive rhetorical mechanism of news headlines in detail to testify the effectiveness and practicability of new model. After all, a thorough and comprehensive analysis of 1194 news headlines and 13 rhetorical strategies has been made through CRE.

4.1 Data Collection and Description

As we have mentioned in chapter two, one of the problems of previous researches on news headlines is that they are mainly based on the introspection instead of on real data corpus. Therefore, a data-based research is necessary in this thesis. Legal Report is the representative in Chinese legal show. In order to find out an appropriate theory to explain the rhetorical strategies in news headlines, this paper chooses headlines of Legal Report form the year 2010 to 2013 on CCTV as data corpus. This thesis adopts a qualitative and quantitative research analysis under the cognitive rhetorical framework. It is qualitative, for the study is analyzed at the cognitive rhetorical level; it is quantitative, for this thesis applies statistic and comprehensive description and data-based analysis.

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Conclusion

This chapter is the conclusion of this thesis, the first part is the significance and contributions of the thesis, and then the author will points out the limitations and gives some suggestions for the thesis. This thesis attempts to explore the cognitive rhetorical mechanism of the rhetorical strategies in the headlines of Legal Report from the perspective of Cognitive Rhetoric. The previous researches about news headlines mainly focus on their rhetorical, pragmatic effects and the functions of headlines, and cognitive researches still remain on a relatively superficial level and on a small amount. Besides, there is no systematic study about rhetorical strategies in the headlines of Legal Report from the perspective of Cognitive Rhetoric, and there is no closed data corpus constitutes with hundreds of headlines from the Legal Report. It is well known that the thesis with a large amount of data will be more convincing. Therefore, a large amount of data is necessary in this paper. The main purpose of this thesis is to give an analysis of the cognitive rhetorical illustration of rhetorical strategies used in the headlines of Legal Report in light of CRE. It aims to break the traditional study and find a new way to study the news headlines.

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The reference (omitted)

优秀英语论文范文篇十

Chapter one Introduction

1.1 Research Background

Verbal humor is the most important form of humor. Many scholars do various researches in different fields on verbal humor,for example,from the perspective of semantics,pragmatic and rhetoric. The study of humor is a kind of useful tool for the development of communication among people, especially from the perspective of pragmatic. Verbal humor is a form of language, which has its unique relationship with the pragmatic. Humor study can date from more than 2000 years ago. Lord Shaftesbburry firstly discuss the word “humor”, which means the focus of decreasing the pressure of society. Attrado holds that many linguists does not play an important role until 1960s. Apt holds that humor and language rely on each other. Although pragmatic has been a promising field of linguistics, linguists carry out the researches from the perspective of the pragmatic.According to Leech, the Politeness Principle can be viewed in two forms:the negative form and the positive form. The politeness principle might be formulated in a general way: minimize ( other things being equal) the expression of the impolite beliefs; there is a corresponding positive version : maximize ( other things being equal) the expression of polite beliefs which is somewhat less important.（Leech，1983：81) In fact , except for the proposal of two forms to view the politeness principle and the six maxims under the principle, as we are going to discuss in the following sections , it seems that Leech has never offered an exact definition as to what the politeness principle is. The politeness principle is one of the pragmatic principles that socially constrain communicative behavior of the speaker to ensure the effective use of language in communication, for which the speaker is expected to employ various polite strategies.

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1.2 the Significance of the Research

The globalization of the world makes the communication between different countries more frequent. Therefore humor is much too important for our research into the culture. Firstly Ellen show is a talk show, in our daily life, we often watch the talk show on TV, sometimes we will bear into laughter because of the conversation between the host and the guest. However, we do not know the reasons of laughing. In this thesis, dynamic pragmatic will be applied into the talk show to analyze the reasons of coming into being laughter. Politeness Principle was introduced to the linguistics and played more and more important role in this subject. In the talk show, the host have to create and maintain a harmonious relationship with the guest. Thus, it is necessary for the host to make good use of the politeness principle and to do his best to make the guest relax. What’s more, identifying pragmatic strategies in the talk show can help people to understand the deep meaning. As we all acknowledge that humor is of significance to us, it can help improve the quality of the conversation, humor can be understood in context. Context is a dynamic course. This study is intended to throw some light on both theory and practice in the research. In the theory, it endeavors to broaden the study of dynamic pragmatic. This paper aims to analyze the appearance of humor from the perspective of the dynamic context,the politeness principle. In practice,the research can help more Chinese audience to understand the reasons of laughter and master language in a appropriate way.

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Chapter two Literature Review

2.1 A Brief Introduction to Humor

Humor has been studied in many fields as a hot topic,such as philosophy, psychology, sociology. Many linguists show interests in humor in the 1970s. However, linguists mainly learn more about humor from the perspective of philosophy psychology,sociology. From then on, linguistics gradually play a significant part in humor study in the late 1970s. Charles Morris(1938) make a concept of pragmatic, but linguists did not begin to study verbal humor until 20th century. Later pragmatic scholars were based on pragmatic to analyze humor from the perspective of Adaption theory, Relevance theory, Cooperative principle and Speech Act theory. Humor plays an important role in the daily life which can help people communicate better. However,different scholars have different opinions about humor, so humor has various meanings in academic fields. William Congreve(1964:7) presents “ in my opinions,there are opinions as many as people”, which actually shows the definition of humor.Lin Yutang pointed that humor could be understood by the people who understand the real humor”. What’s more. Humor also has other meanings, for example, the comic, the ludicrous, the funny, wit, joke. Minsky (1974) held that the reason why humor does not has the definition is that humor has direct relationship with many phenomenons. Palmer(1994) defines humor like this : “by humor mean everything that is actually or potentially funny and the processes by which this ‘funniness’ occurs in Taking Humor Seriously”. Etymologically,the word "humor" comes from the Latin word "fluid" or "moisture".

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2.2 Studies on Humor

Traditional theories about humor have been put forward. Superiority Theory; Incongruity Theory; and Relief Theory is the classic theory. Attardo(1994) named three theories as “social”, “psychoanalytical” and “cognitive” respectively. Modern researchers on humor has been carried out from various fields, especially in 1950s and 1960s, there are more and more scholars showing their interests in humor from the perspective of semantics,pragmatics and cognitive linguistics. International inferences about humor are continuous holding in different countries. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research is a sort of academic journal which was set up in 1988(Bright,1992:181) Attrado(1990) explained the reason of humor flouting Grice’s conversational rules. Hancher(1980) expressed his ideas about humor from the perspective of Speech Act. Raskin(1985) proposed the Semantic Script Theory of Humor, which also named the Script-based Semantic Theory of Humor. This theory was based on two semantic scripts and formulated necessary conditions for the text to be funny,in addition, the two scripts are compatible and opposite. Attardo and Raskin(1991) put forward the General Theory of Verbal Humor, where they proposed five other parameters: Logical mechanism,situation, target, narrative strategy and language. Compared with SSTH,the General Theory of Verbal Humor refers to a theory which can consist of many sides,for example,textual linguistic and pragmatics. Raskin(1985) also explored humor into Cooperative Principle. Humor-CP is a new mode of communication. Giora(1997)proposed marked information requirement and optimal innovation hypothesis to make an explanation of humor from the understanding of humor. Geet Brone uses cognitive linguistics to analyze construal operation. Francis(1994) regarded humor as a way of emotion management. Holmes(2006) connected humor with the gender in the workplace, who paid attention to the content of humor in gender. Nesi(2012) involved different practices of humor in lecture, who argued that the use of humor in lectures is culture-specific.

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Chapter Three Theoretical Foundation ........12

3.1 Dynamic Pragmatic.........12

3.2 Politeness Principle .........13

3.3 Conversational Analysis........17

3.4 Conversational Implicature........18

Chapter Four Research Methodology .....20

4.1 Research Questions .........20

4.2 Research Method.......20

4.3 Data Collection ....21

4.4 Research Procedure ........21

Chapter Five Dynamic Pragmatic Analysis of....24 Verbal Humor in Ellen Show........24

5.1 The Changes of Context Leading to Verbal Humor in Ellen Show.....24

5.2 Analysis of Verbal Humor in Ellen Show from the Perspective.........29

5.3 Analysis of Humor in Ellen Show from the Perspective....49

5.4 Analysis of Humor in Ellen Show from the Perspective of Topic Changes....53

Chapter Five Dynamic Pragmatic Analysis of Verbal Humor in Ellen Show

5.1 The Changes of Context Leading to Verbal Humor in Ellen Show

In the eyes of almost all the pragmatists, “context” is a vitally important concept. In fact, it is so important that a good many of the scholars have made great efforts to study the context. It has been widely discussed since the emergence of modern linguistics in different fields. To understand the context and understand the exchanges, we should rely on the context for a great number of detailed inferences. Both the participants should have common knowledge about the language in use. What’s more, we should also be equipped with some relevant extra-linguistic knowledge, i.e., background knowledge, situational knowledge and mutual knowledge. Background knowledge is composed of three parts: encyclopedia knowledge, social norms and conversational rules of a specific culture, which the author understand as optional. Extra-linguistic knowledge also includes situational knowledge, i.e., the time and the place and the topic of the communication, degree of formlessness of the exchange and the relationship of the conversational participants. The mutual knowledge, in the eyes of the pragmatists, is often regarded to be an essential concept for pragmatic inference. Now we have a deeper understanding of the fact that the concept of the “context” in pragmatics is different from that referred to in traditional linguistics. One of the most important differences between the two is that it is viewed by pragmatists as dynamic, like the concept of “meaning”.

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Conclusion

The thesis focuses on the analysis of verbal humor from the perspective of pragmatic, which mainly selected the talk show Ellen Show as the data. The verbal humor is connected with the following theories: Politeness Principle, Dynamic context, topic changes. Through the course of analysis, some major findings are summarized as followings: Firstly, verbal humor can be produced by the changes of context, flouting the Politeness Principle and topic changes. For one thing, the dynamic context results in the humor because the host hopes that the changes of the context would make the atmosphere of scene become funny and humorous. For another thing, Politeness Principle is of great significance to the guest because the host Ellen must respect every guest and make use of different ways to make the audience laugh. Therefore, adhering to the Politeness Principle or flouting the Politeness Principle leads to the verbal humor. Politeness Principle has six maxims , which also has close relationship with the verbal humor.Tact Maxim,Generosity Maxim,Approbation Maxim,Modesty Maxim, Agreement Maxim and Sympathy Maxim are included in the Politeness Principle. The host communicates with the guest more humorously and she usually adheres to six maxims. Due to her politeness, the verbal humor appears in this talk show. What’s more, for interviewing the guest, the host has difference topics to turn to make the audience know more about the guest. When the topic changes, Ellen always asks some interesting questions whose answer the audience are interested in, and then that makes the audience laugh.

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The reference (omitted)