【作者】 席留生；

【导师】 麻保金；

【作者基本信息】 河南大学 ， 英语语言文学， 2003， 硕士

【摘要】 说明文是以说明为主的文章，其目的在于对所写的事物进行解释，回答“怎么样”、“为什么”之类的问题。说明文是应用最广泛的体裁之一，在我们日常的生活和工作中都经常遇到和用到。无论是读书还是看报，我们都经常遇到说明文；各种各样的行动指南、使用说明，甚至烹饪法，都是说明文。在目前中国学生面临的种类繁多的英语考试中，说明文是阅读试题中出现较多的一种。尽管好多中国学者认为，英汉说明文大体相同，但人们发现：许多熟谙汉语说明文又学过多年英语的人阅读英语说明文仍感到困难。当然，因素是多方面的。不过，通过对比研究，找出英汉说明文结构的异同无疑将有助于提高中国读者理解说明文的能力。本文的写作就旨在通过对比分析，找出二者在宏观和微观层次上的相似性和差异性，以期对阅读英语说明文的中国读者有所帮助。本文共分四章：第一章是综述部分。首先简单介绍了什么是对比语言学和语篇语言学。然后介绍和评述了在两者基础上发展起来的语篇对比研究在国内发展的现状。最后陈述了本文的选题目的。第二章是全文的理论框架。本章介绍了修辞结构理论，涉及它的基<WP=8>本成分、本质和分析程序，同时阐明了采用该理论进行分析的具体原因。第三章是具体分析。首先是背景信息。包括所选语料的背景信息，概念辨别和分析方法。语料的选取采用了Krzezowski的三维比较论，即对比分析的篇章属性要求“三同”：语域或体裁相同、语体相同和话题相同。在概念辨别中，作者简明地辨析了两对概念：话语和篇章，形合和意合。在分析方法上，作者采用宏观和微观相结合的方法。然后，作者在宏观和微观两个层面上对所选的语料进行了具体对比分析。宏观分析显示了如下发现：二者都可以进行修辞结构分析；英汉科技说明文遵循相似的语篇模式---总分与匹配相结合的模式。微观分析的结果是：英语科技说明文重形合，汉语科技说明文重意合；前者多用从属结构，后者多用并列结构。第四章是结论和讨论。总结了分析的结果和探讨了造成该结果的原因。首先，英汉科技说明文都存在修辞结构分析，这一点很有意义。由于关系的功能性本质，分析者能够在语篇的各个层次看出作者的写作目的。同时表明，功能性归根结底是科技说明文语篇连贯的基础。第二，英汉科技说明文遵循相似的语篇模式,这是作者对结构关系的选择在语篇中的反映，而结构关系的选择取决于作者的写作目的和所写文章的体裁类型。第三，在微观层次上，英汉科技说明文在形合和意合、从属和并列方面的差异主要归因于英汉两种语言不同的文化背景和思维模式。最后，作者指出了修辞结构理论作为语篇对比分析理<WP=9>论的前景和本文的不足。更多还原

【Abstract】 Expository essays are compositions focusing on exposition, whose purpose is to explain or to provide readers with information to help them understand the world around them. Expository essays give answers to such questions as "how", "why" and so on. They are among the most frequently used genres that we often encounter and use in our daily life. When we read newspapers we will face them as well as when we read books. Various instructions, directions of use, even recipes for cooking all belong to expository writings. Expository essays play an important role in varieties of English tests that Chinese students are faced with. Although many Chinese scholars maintain that Chinese and English writers have not much to differ in writing expository essays, it is unluckily found that it is still difficult to understand English expository essays for many Chinese students who are familiar with Chinese expository essays and have studied English for quite a few years. This is of course connected with more than one factor. However, it is undoubtedly helpful to seek the similarities and differences of English and Chinese expository essays in structures through contrastive studies. The aim of writing this paper rightly lies in investigating these similarities and differences at the global<WP=10>and local levels by means of effective analyses, expecting to provide some help for Chinese readers in their reading English expository essays. This paper only takes scientific expository essays as the objective of analysis for the time prevents the author from making an analysis of all types of expository essays within the scope of one paper. This paper is made up of four chapters. Chapter One is an introduction. Firstly, a short introduction is presented to contrastive linguistics and text linguistics. Then, it is presented how contrastive discourse studies based on the two previously mentioned branches have developed in China. In the 3rd section of Chapter One, the author states the purpose of choosing this topic. Chapter Two is the theoretical framework of this paper. It gives a sketchy introduction to Rhetorical Structure Theory, including its fundamental viewpoints and the procedure of analysis together with the advantages of this theory in discourse analysis. Chapter Three is a concrete analysis. The 1st section of this chapter provides some background information, including the background information to the data, concepts discrimination and the methodology of the analysis. The author selects the data on Krzezowski’s ’tertium comparationis’, that is, to prevent ’comparisons of incomparables’, it is necessary to require each pair of the sample texts (a) to be written in the same register and (b) to represent the same literary style and (c) to deal with the same/similar topic. In concepts discrimination, the author<WP=11>concisely distinguishes two pairs of concepts: discourse vs text and hypostxis vs parataxis. In the method of analysis, the author adopts the global and local analyses. Subsequent to the background, the author makes contrastive analyses at the global and local levels. The result of the global analysis is as follows: Both English and Chinese scientific expository essays have RST analyses; they both follow the similar textual pattern---general-particular pattern in combination with matching pattern. The findings gained from the local analysis are that: English scientific expository essays stresses hypotaxis, while the Chinese counterparts put emphasis on parataxis; the former uses more subordination and less coordination than the latter. This part constitutes the main body of the paper. Chapter Four is conclusion and discussion, summarizing the analytical results and discussing the reasons underlying them. Firstly, both English and Chinese scientific expository essays have RST analyses, which is of high importance. The nature of relations is functional, which enables the analyst to discover the writer’s purposes at different levels of text, and sets the foundation of coherence of text. Seco更多还原