摘要

情态问题的研究不仅广受哲学家、逻辑学家的关注，近年来也受到了语言学家们的青睐，已成为语言学家们研究的重要课题之一，并取得了较为可观的成就。本文在系统功能语言学理论框架的指导下，旨在比较英语新闻语篇中隐含的情态主客观取向。采用定性和定量的研究方法，运用语料库分析软件，对比分析《中国日报》和《纽约时报》同一时间段内关于2010年上海世博会的报道，探讨各自隐含的情态取向。并尝试着就某些有争议的问题提出自己的见解，以期推动这一课题的深入研究。

关键词：系统功能语法；情态系统；情态取向；新闻报道；

Abstract

Modality has long been a major focus of interest for not only logicians and philosophers, but also linguists. A lot of researches have been done and great achievements been received in linguistics. Mainly based on Halliday’s framework of modality, this thesis aims at exploring modality orientations in English news reports on the same event--- the 2010 Shanghai Expo, by making a comparative analysis of materials chosen from China Daily and The New York Times. And more discussions are carried on the disputed issues, depending on the corpus-based data provided for quantitative and qualitative analysis.

Key words: systemic functional grammar; modality system; modality orientation; news reports;

1    Introduction

With the grand closure on the evening of October 31st, the 2010 Shanghai Expo, one of the biggest events around the world last year has come to its completion. During the past 6 months, innumerable reports on it continued to show up. How do people think of the 2010 Shanghai Expo? Are there any differences between the Chinese and the Americans in their attitudes? What are they? How do people express their opinions? Such questions are required to be answered.
Among western media, the basic point of being professional when reporting is to remain objective. Objectivity means the deviation from personal bias, emotion and opinions. Since 1900s, the principle of objectivity has gradually been the standard in the field of news media, taking its predominant position. The reporter shows the credibility of his reports through objectivity in order to enhance his position of being professional. Thus, objectivity is regarded as the sign of the responsible press.