外交学院英语语言文学外国语言学与应用语言学.DOC

A Sample Prospectus for MA Thesis PAGE PAGE 4 外交学院英语语言文学、外国语言学与应用语言学 硕士学位论文开题报告 Prospectus 论文题目：English和中文 Probing into the Defining Element of A Genre ──Using American President’s Radio Addresses to the Nation as the Corpus of Data 中文题目缺 研究生： So and So 导师： Professor So and So 选题缘由： I acquired a strong interest in genre theory during the course of English Stylistics lectured by Prof. Yang Xueyan. I have been a big fan of former US President Bill Clinton for his eloquent speeches. 研究现状： A number of functional linguists have explored this domain and made discourse analysis of a variety of genres. However, there still exists no universally accepted theory on the defining element of a genre. For example, based on her study on service encounter, Ruqaiya Hasan concludes that the three values in the contextual configuration of the “context of situation”, i.e. “field”, “tenor” and “mode”, especially the value of “field”, as the decisive element in defining a ‘genre’. Drawing on Michael Gregory’s further classification of the concept of “tenor” into “personal tenor” and “functional tenor”, James R. Martin advocates that “functional tenor” underlies “field”, “personal tenor” and “mode” and is realized through them. Thus “functional tenor” is considered as a defining variable that constrains “field”, “personal tenor” and “mode” and is renamed “genre”. 选题意义： Genre theory is becoming a prevailing approach in Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) studies. This thesis aims to make some contribution to the development and application of genre theory. Radio address constitutes a unique genre among the sub-varieties of public speeches due to its special features like channel and medium of communication. American President’s radio addresses to the nation are ideal objects for SFL studies for its salient social functions as a powerful means of mass communication between the US administration and the general public. They also provide important data for the study of US domest