Abstract:

This study aims to explore the effects of absolute tense of indirect speech on news discourse. News owns its stylistic characteristics and we can find that the use of absolute tense of indirect speech is getting popularity in news nowadays.  In the light of Paul Kiparsky’s temporal parameters, temporal relations and Halliday’s projection theory, this thesis analyzes the effects mainly by grammatical analysis approach. Two effects are found in this thesis: (I) to make news keep effectiveness for a given period of time, (II) to add the reporters’ ideology into news, and these two effects are meanwhile illuminated through case analysis. A conclusion is found that the use of absolute tense of indirect speech plays a role in news characteristics.

Key Words: absolute tense; indirect speech; news discourse

摘要：

本文旨在研究间接引语的绝对时态在新闻语篇中的作用。鉴于新闻自身行文特点，新闻中间接引语的绝对时态的使用比较常见。本文借助Paul Kiparsky的时间参数、时间关系以及Halliday的投射理论，通过语法分析手段分析间接引语的绝对时态在新闻语篇中的作用。研究得出两个作用：一、使新闻保持时间上的有效性，二、使报道者的意识形态融入新闻，并用案例对两个作用进行阐释分析。研究发现间接引语的绝对时态的使用对新闻特点有一定的影响。

关键词：绝对时态；间接引语；新闻语篇

1. Introduction
Nowadays, the world witnesses the daily deepening trend of the globalization in both economy and information. Mass media, like TV, radio, newspapers, internet and so on, as an effective and accessible tool, has been widely used for the spread and exchange of information. People can get large quantity of information about what is happening in the world now through news. There are many characteristics of news, such as timeliness, objectiveness, accuracy, simplicity, attractiveness and so on. News, however, is not objective as people expect that it can make people hear the actual voices from people in every walk of life. Many factors will bring subjectivity to news, like using synonyms that differ in their emotive or evaluative meaning, transforming active voice into passive voice, untraditional tense use, etc.
Van Dijk (1988) has proposed that one of the most apparent features of news is that news reports constitute a specific kind of discourse. “Reported speech is framed in forms of direct speech and indirect speech” (Johansen, 2011:2849). Therefore, in news discourse, we can easily find that direct speech and indirect speech are two major ways to report (refers to retailing here) what others have said. This thesis will base on news discourse and discuss how one kind of untraditional tense phenomenon; i.e. absolute tense of indirect speech will affect two characteristics of news: timeliness and objectiveness. Instruments used in this study mainly include case analysis, grammatical analysis and establishing a model by means of Paul Kiparsky’s temporal parameters and relations.