A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS ON DISCOURSE PROPERTIES OF INTERNATIONAL NEWS ON ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE INTERNET NEWSPAPERS

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY M.A THESIS A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS ON DISCOURSE PROPERTIES OF INTERNATIONAL NEWS ON ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE INTERNET NEWSPAPERS (PHÂN TÍCH ĐỐI CHIẾU ĐẶC ĐIỂM DIỄN NGÔN TIN QUỐC TẾ TRÊN BÁO MẠNG TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT) NGUYỄN THỊ THƠ Field: English Language Code: 60220201 Hanoi, 2018 i MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY M.A THESIS A CONTRANSTIVE ANALYSIS ON DISCOURSE PROPERTIES OF INTERNATIONAL NEWS ON ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE INTERNET NEWSPAPERS (PHÂN TÍCH ĐỐI CHIẾU ĐẶC ĐIỂM DIỄN NGƠN TIN QUỐC TẾ TRÊN BÁO MẠNG TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT) NGUYỄN THỊ THƠ Field: English Language Code: 60220201 Supervisor: Dr MAI THỊ LOAN ii Hanoi, 2018 DECLARATION I certify that this thesis with the title A contrastive analysis on discourse properties of international news on English and Vietnamese internet newspapers is my own study The data, results and finding in this thesis are truly The thesis has not been submitted for a higher degree to any other university or institution I confirm that when I quoted from the work of others, the source was always given Signature: Nguyễn Thị Thơ Approved by SUPERVISOR iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This MA thesis was successfully completed with the supports of many people to whom I want to express my gratitude First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere thanks to my supervisor, Dr Mai Thi Loan, for her valuable instruction, support and encouragement throughout my research process Without her devoting guidance, I could not have finished this thesis I would also like to give my sincere thanks to all the lecturers, professors and doctors teaching at the post graduate faculty of Hanoi Open university for their lectures and supports during my course My deeply–felt thanks go to my family who have supported, cared for me and provided me with all the best conditions as well as the moral support so that I could concentrate on this thesis I would like to thank my husband for his support All these have become the spritual strength which saved me from all the difficulties and stress I got during the thesis time Last but not least, I would like to give thanks to my friends, who have encouraged and supported for my study process to finish this MA thesis iv ABSTRACT This thesis studied discourse properties of international news on English and Vietnamese internet newspapers An analysis and a comparation were made to find out differences and similarities between international news on English and Vietnamese internet newspapers The corpus of the study consists of 200 international news items withdrawn from famous internet newspapers on the world wide web 100 of them are from English internet newspapers and the other are from Vietnamese ones Motivation to conduct the study is two-fold First, while there exists a multitude of studies that compare between English and Vietnamese, very little contrastive analysis has been carried out at the level of discourse Second, the explosive growth of internet in recent years makes remarkable contribution to the blooming of a new press type: internet newspapers Moreover, the pressure of globalization forces mutual understanding among nations That is why international news on internet newspapers is chosen the main subject of this study The thesis will analyze discourse properties in terms of linguistic features Results of the analysis will be the similarities and differences between the two subject groups concerning linguistic features Besides the sudy will give suggestions for learners of English to overcome errors when studying written translation of the international news on Vietnamese internet newspapers LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Directness and indirectness on English internet newspapers Table 2: Types of headlines on English internet newspapers Table 3: Structure of noun phrase headlines on English internet newspapers Table 4: Types of sentence headlines on English internet newspapers Table 5: Simple vs complex sentences as headlines on English internet newspapers Table 6: Sentence patterns of headlines on English internet newspapers Table 7: Directness and indirectness on Vietnamese internet newspapers Table 8: Types of headlines on Vietnamese internet newspapers Table 9: Types of phrase headlines on Vietnamese internet newspapers Table 10: Types of sentence headlines on Vietnamese internet newspapers Table 11: Simple vs complex sentences on Vietnamese internet newspapers Table 12: Sentence patterns in headlines on Vietnamese internet newspapers Table 13: Errors made by students Table 14: Terminology errors Table 15: Errors made by students Table 16: Reasons cause the errors by students Table 17: Suggestions by students TABLE OF CONTENTS Certificate of originality i Acknowledgements ii Abstract List of tables Table of contents iii v vi CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1.1.Rationale 1.2 Aims and objectives of the study 1.2.1 The aims of the study 1.2.1 The objectives of the study 1.3 Research questions 1.4 Research methods 1.5 Scope of the study 1.6 Significance of the study 1.7.Design of the study CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Previous studies 2.2 Discourse and text 2.2.1 Discourse and text… ……………………………………………………… 2.2.2 Criteria of discourse………………………………………………………… 2.2.3 Genre of discourse…………………………………………………………….9 2.2.4 International news on internet newspapers 2.2.4.1 Internet newspapers 2.2.4.2 International news on internet newspapers 11 2.3 Contrastive analysis 12 2.3.1 Definition of contrastive analysis 12 2.3.2 Principles for contrastive study 13 2.4 Linguistic features of international news on English and on Vietnamese internet newspapers 2.4.1 The linguistic features of international news on English internet newspapers 14 2.4.2 The linguistic features of international news on Vietnamese internet newspapers 2.5 Summary………………………………………………………………………20 CHAPTER III: DISCOURSE PROPERTIES OF INTERNATIONAL NEWS ON ENGLISH INTERNET NEWSPAPERS AND ON VIETNAMESE INTERNET NEWSPAPERS 3.1 DISCOURSE PROPERTIES OF INTERNATIONAL NEWS ON ENGLISH INTERNET NEWSPAPERS 3.1.1 Lexical choice 21 3.1.2 Tense 22 3.1.3 Directness and indirectness 22 3.1.4 Sentence patterns 24 3.1.5 Cohesion devices 29 3.2 DISCOURSE PROPERTIES OF INTERNATIONAL NEWS ON VIETNAMESE INTERNET NEWSPAPERS 3.2.1 Lexical choice 31 3.2.2 Tense 32 3.2.3 Directness and indirectness 33 3.2.4 Sentence patterns 34 3.2.5 Cohesion devices 48 3.3 Comparison of discourse properties of international news on Vietnamese internet newspapers and on English internet newspapers 39 3.4 Summary 42 CHAPTER IV: ERRORS MADE BY STUDENTS AT NAMDINH UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION WHEN LEARNING VIETNAMESEENGLISH TRANSLATION OF INTERNATIONAL NEWS ON VIETNAMESE INTERNET NEWSPAPERS 4.1 Subjects 43 4.2 Data collection instruments 43 4.2.1 Test 43 4.2.2 Questionnaire……………………………………………………… …… 43 4.2.3 Interview 43 4.3 Procedure…………… ……………………………………………………… 44 4.4 Data analysis………………………………………………………………… 45 4.4.1 The test…………………………………………………………… ……….46 4.4.2 The questionnaire 46 4.4.3 The interview 49 4.5 Causes of committing errors………………………………………………… 50 4.6 Suggestions for overcoming errors when translating the international news on Vietnamese internet newspapers………………………………………………… 51 4.7 Summary 52 CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION 5.1 Recapitulation………………………………………………………… …… 54 5.2 Concluding remarks 55 5.3 Implications 55 5.4 Limitations…………………………………………………………………….56 5.5 Recommendations for further study………………………………………… 56 REFERENCES APPENDIX CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale Mass media in general and newspaper in particular nowadays plays a very important role in our lives Many people even say that living in the world without newspapers is like living in an isolated island Newspaper helps us become informed citizens and make better decision by providing a lot of facts Hard news stories, vital statistics, weather, sport, etc are examples of items that help inform readers Some newspapers articles help interprete or explain the meaning of news to readers In the modern life, it is the rapid growth in communication technology that has created new media for language use Therefore, analyzing language is unsurprisingly paid much attention to not only by linguists but also by people at large In traditional linguistic research, there are many works on text analysis, which focus only on the formal properties of language divorced from their communicative functions Modern linguistic tendency of research focuses on discourse analysis, which is functional analysis of discourse involving the analysis of language in use Emphasizing as above, it is to be noted that discourse properties, although a challenge to researchers and learners, has attracted much of their attention This inspires the thesis author up for the contrastive study of discourse properties between English and Vietnamese, and the chosen subject is news on internet newspapers In English, the investigation of news is concerned, a number of writers have discussed some aspects of language in journalism such as Crystal and Davy (1971), Van Dijk (1988) In Vietnam, Nguyễn Hoà (1998) was focused on discourse analysis of news on political, economic and social issues However, all of those studies examine news in only print newspapers or analyze just small segments of news discourse We are living in an era of globalization, in which all nations are closely interrelated They need to have deep understanding of their counterparts in every issue International news on the internet meets their information thirst Secondly, no one can deny the roles of Internet in society, which provides a huge volume of information in the quickest, most effective way with the greatest impact Thanks to the Internet, all countries of the world can know about each other All the advantages of other mass media are encompassed in the Internet The development of the Internet has brought about great revolutions in mass media, among which internet newspapers see 10 ... Vietnamese internet newspapers based on field: Linguistic features and comparison of discourse properties of the international news on Vietnamese internet newspapers and on English internet newspapers. .. several related terms and definitions as to discourse properties, contrastive analysis, internet newspapers, international news on internet newspapers, and approach, linguistic features of international. .. in contrastive analysis, discourse properties, internet newspapers and news on internet newspapers Chapter III gives description of discourse properties of the international news on English and