中美大学生申请信主位选择对比的研究硕士论文.doc

分类号:H31 10710-2009113007 硕士学位论文 中美大学生申请信主位选择对比研究 胡晓芳  导师姓名职称  徐玉臣 教授  申请学位级别 论文提交日期 学位授予单位  文学硕士 2012 年 5 月 29 日  学科专业名称 论文答辩日期 长安大学  外国语言学及应用语言学 2012 年 6 月 8 日 Thematic Choice in Application Letters: A Contrastive Study between Chinese Undergraduates and American Undergraduates A Dissertation Submitted for the Degree of Master Candidate：Hu Xiaofang Supervisor：Prof. Xu Yuchen Chang‘an University, Xi‘an, China Acknowledgements I feel very grateful to my supervisor, Professor Xu Yuchen, for his academic guidance and warm encouragement to me in my three-year postgraduate study. It is his careful instruction and inexhaustible patience that inspire me and help me with my accomplishment of my study and dissertation. I‘d also like to extend my heartfelt thanks to all the other teachers, whose insightful lectures and outstanding ways of teaching enlighten me to have a better understanding of applied linguistics and functional linguistics. Besides, I also want to express my sincere gratitude to all my classmates, my colleagues and my friends who always provide me with endless support and continuous encouragement and motivate me to go on during the three years of postgraduate study. Abstract Theme, as an important notion in Systemic Functional Grammar, was defined by Halliday (1994) in An Introduction to Functional Grammar as the point of departure of message and realized by the first position in the English clause. Theme is considered to play a crucial role in the construction of texts, particularly in the organization of the message. The current study aimed to do a contrastive study on the similarities and the differences between native speakers and non-native speakers in their thematic choice of writing English application letters and intended to analyze the reasons causing the results. As for data collection, for the first group (native speakers of English), letters written by American undergraduates were collected. For the second group (non-native speakers o