摘 要

新闻作为人们获取信息，了解国内外时事的主要途径，越来越成为人们文化生活中的一个重要组成部分。英语新闻不仅能帮助人们了解世界，还能促进英语的学习。因此，本文以英语新闻作为研究对象，基于韩礼德和哈森的衔接与连贯理论，分析其中的衔接和连贯。

本研究主要讨论了民生、社会、政治等三大类英语新闻中的指称、替代、省略、连接以及词汇搭配这五个不同的衔接手段，分析三类新闻中衔接和连贯的异同。研究发现，在英语新闻中，指称和连接衔接明显多于替代、省略和词汇衔接三种衔接，但指称衔接又是连接的三倍多。对于指称衔接，民生新闻中使用最多，政治新闻使用最少。而替代是五种衔接手段中出现最少的。除了指称衔接外，连接是其他四种衔接中使用最多的，其中，增补明显多于转折、因果和时间连接。在英语中，词汇衔接又明显多于替代和省略。

关键词：英语新闻；衔接与连贯；衔接手段；相同点；差异

Contents

1. Introduction 1
   1. Introduction to the Research 1
   2. Significance of the Research 2
   3. Structure of the Thesis 3
2. Demonstration 3
   1. Literature Review 3
   2. Methodology 4
      1. Research Questions 4
      2. Tools and Materials 4
      3. Data Collection 5
   3. Results 5
      1. Reference 5
      2. Substitutions 6
      3. Ellipsis 8
      4. Conjunction 9
      5. Lexical Cohesion 10
   4. Discussion 11
      1. The common cohesive devices in English news 11
      2. The differences in frequency of cohesive devices 11
3. Conclusion 14
   1. Major Findings 14
   2. Implications 14
   3. Limitations and the Further Study 15

Works cited 16

Bibliography 16

A Corpus-based Study on Cohesion and Coherence of English News

Introduction

• 1. Introduction to the Research

In the 1960s, Halliday and Hasan first proposed the meaning of text and made a profound study on it. They think that the concept of cohesion is a semantic one; it refers to relations of meaning that exist within the text, and that define it as a text. Cohesion occurs where the interpretation of some element in the discourse is dependent on that of another. Cohesion is divided into reference, substitution, ellipsis, connection and lexical cohesion.

However, domestic scholars Zhangamp;Liu (2003) classified cohesion from semantic and formal levels. “On the semantic level, cohesion is a concept of meaning. At the level of form, the cohesion of discourse is reflected and marked by language form in terms of pronunciation, intonation, vocabulary and grammar”. They made a new division between cohesion and coherence. Many scholars have also conducted applied research and analysis on the basis of these theories. For example, in the application of coherence and cohesion theory in Chinese and English sports news, Wu and Lin (2018) concluded that “No matter in English or Chinese sports news, the application of reference is very extensive, especially personal reference and directive reference. Ellipsis is more frequently used in Chinese sports news than in English sports news”. Zhao concluded from the comparative analysis of cohesive devices between English and Chinese economic news that “personal reference, demonstrative reference and lexical cohesion in English texts were significantly more than those in Chinese ones, while substitution, ellipsis and conjunction were significantly less than those in Chinese ones”. Shen and Yu (2013) in the application of cohesive devices in English news texts showed that “in a specific text, context determines the coherence between words in the text, plays a controlling role in lexical semantics, and is a kind of implicit information. The contextual knowledge of the reader is sometimes more

important than other cohesive devices in the cognition of lexical semantics. Cohesion in a text is the only one of the factors to identify its textual nature, which is "formal" coherence.”