A Comparative Study of English and Japanese News Discourse - A Cross-Cultural Perspective

本文报告了2003- 2004学年在科学研究资助金（No.15520374）的支持下进行的题为“跨文化视角下的英日新语篇比较研究”的研究结果。从跨文化交际和理解的角度对英语和日语报刊语篇进行了研究。在第一章中，作者对本研究进行了概述，第二章则介绍了本研究的理论背景，包括目前在新闻语篇分析中非常有影响力的批评性话语分析（CDA）。第三章介绍了两类语篇的实际分析。首先，第3.1章对英国和日本报纸的捕鲸新闻社论进行了比较和对比，并指出各自报纸的编辑出于不同的原因使用了非常不同的策略来说服读者。第3.2章分析了英国一家报纸上关于捕鲸和钓鳕鱼的两种不同类型的话语，并报告说，对这两个话题的处理是截然不同的，这取决于它们是否与该国的文化和经济密切相关。第四章介绍了两类问卷的结果，这两类问卷的目的分别是：第一，不同文化假设和知识背景下的读者对新闻社论的理解（4.1）;第二，不同文化假设和知识背景下的读者对新闻社论的理解（4.2）。结果表明，两者之间存在明显的联系。第五章总结本研究并讨论其对语言教学的启示。本文最后提出了进一步研究的建议。

This paper reports the result of research entitled 'A Comparative Study of English and Japanese New Discourse - A Cross-Cultural Perspective', which was conducted with the support of the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (No.15520374) in the academic years 2003-4. It investigated English and Japanese newspaper discourse from the perspective of cross-cultural communication and understanding. In so doing, the paper focused specifically on the topic of whaling, which is culturally loaded and thus relevant to the purpose of the investigation.After a general introduction to the research in Chapter 1,Chapter 2 discusses theoretical backgrounds to the study, including Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA), which is currently very influential in the analysis of news discourse. Chapter 3 introduces actual analyses of two types of discourse; firstly, Chapter 3.1 compares and contrasts news editorials on whaling in both British and Japanese newspapers and claims that editors in the respective newspapers utilize very different strategies to persuade readers for different causes. Chapter 3.2 analyses two different types of discourse on whaling and cod-fishing in a British newspaper and reports that the treatment of the topics is drastically different depending on whether they are closely related to the country's culture and economy. Chapter 4 introduces the results of two types of questionnaires which were conducted to investigate, firstly, the perception of news editorials by readers with differing cultural assumptions and knowledge on a specific topic (4.1), and secondly, how different cultural assumptions and prior knowledge on a topic affect readers' interpretations of a text (4.2). The results have shown a clear connection between the two. Chapter 5 summarizes the study and discusses its implications for language pedagogy. The paper concludes with suggestions for further investigation.