论文写作样本

Contents Abstract (1)

Introduction (2)

Chapter 1 Lexical Ambiguity in English News Headlines (5)

1.1Lexical Features of Headlines (5)

1.1.1Economy of Word Choice (5)

1.1.2Emergence of Neologism (6)

1.2Lexical Ambiguity in Headlines (7)

1.2.1 Causes of Lexical Ambiguity in Headlines (8)

1.2.2 Tactics of Coping with Lexical Ambiguity in

Headlines (10)

Chapter 2 Grammatical Ambiguity in English News Headlines (13)

2.1 Grammatical Features of Headlines (13)

2.1.1 Omission of Words (13)

2.1.2 Frequent Use of Simple Present Tense (14)

2.1.3 Frequent Use of Non-finite V erbs (15)

2.2 Grammatical Ambiguity in Headlines (16)

2.2.1 Causes of Grammatical Ambiguity in Headlines (17)

2.2.2 Tactics of Coping with Grammatical Ambiguity in

Headlines (19)

Chapter 3 Functions of English News Headlines and Effects of Ambiguity (22)

3.1 Functions of English News Headlines (22)

3.1.1 Informative Function (22)

3.1.2 Attractive Function (24)

3.2 Effects of Ambiguity on the Realization of Headlines’

Functions (25)

3.2.1 Effects Arising from Intentional Ambiguity (25)

3.2.2 Effects Arising from Unintentional Ambiguity (26)

3.3 Optimization of English News Headlines (27)

3.3.1 Fidelity to the News Text to Achieve the Informative

Function (28)

3.3.2 Ingenious Techniques to Achieve the Attractive

Function (28)

Conclusion (30)

Notes (32)

Bibliography (33)

Acknowledgements (34)

Ambiguity in English News Headlines

Xie Qiong

Abstract: A common phenomenon in many languages is ambiguity which means more than one meaning is contained in a sentence. As a result of the quickening pace of modern life, people get to know much of the news just by glancing at the news headlines. Undoubtedly, ambiguous headlines will cause some trouble for the readers. Some of the ambiguous headlines result from the compilers’ unconscious misusing of words or negligence of grammatical features, while others may come forth because the compilers want to achieve a special effect. The first two parts of this paper give an account of the basic lexical and grammatical features of news headlines and also the causes of lexical and grammatical ambiguity via analysis of many representative headlines. Besides, suggestions of resolving the ambiguity are given respectively. Combined with the functions of English news headlines, this thesis tries to analyze the effects arising from intentional and unintentional ambiguity respectively. Ingenious intentional ambiguous headlines can bring magic and enjoyment into the experience of reading. However, unintentional ambiguous headlines often cause obstacles to communication, thus unintentional ambiguity should be avoided as much as possible. Striving for the convenience of readers, this paper advocates the news compilers to make great efforts to employ explicit headlines and prudently utilize intentional ambiguous headlines only when the compilers want to stir up the readers’interest in some news that is worthy of particular attention.

Key Words: English news headlines；intentional ambiguity; unintentional ambiguity

内容提要：歧义指一个句子包含一种以上的意思，它是语言的一种普遍现象。由于生活节奏的不断加快，很多人看新闻往往只看标题,因此标题中的歧义则会给读者带来阅读困难。有些歧义标题是编者无意识地用错了一些词汇或者忽略了英语新闻标题的语法特征造成的，而另外的则是编者为了达到某种效果而刻意为之。本论文前两章通过分析大量新闻标题，对新闻标题的词汇语法特征进行了初步概括并对词汇语法方面引起的歧义进行了分析。针对这两方面的歧义，本文还分别给出了一些消歧意见。此外，文章结合新闻标题的功能分别对蓄意与无意歧义进行分析。巧妙的蓄意歧义可以给读者的阅读过程增加魅力与乐趣，而无意歧义则会阻碍交流。为了使读者们读新闻时更加方便明了，本论文提倡新闻编辑者尽量使用清晰明确的标题，只有在认为某条新闻值得特别关注而需要吸引读者视线的情况下才谨慎地使用蓄意歧义。

关键词：英语新闻标题；蓄意歧义；无意歧义

Introduction

News functions as an important information carrier in modern society. When reading a piece of news, we always would like to find special reports and interesting information as quickly as possible. In order to do that, we need a “guide”. Obviously, the headline serves as an ideal “guide”, for it is the summarization and generalization of the content of the news. It condenses the content of the most important and most attractive news with concise words. As headlines are the “eyes” of news, they must be accurate, concise, timeless and fresh in order to attract the attention of readers and get them acquainted with the events that happen at home and abroad.

The study on news headlines started quite early. Many researchers have studied on stylistic characteristics and language features of news headlines. However, in order to transmit the exact information to the readers, the news headlines should avoid obscurity as much as possible. Actually, ambiguity, either intentional or unintentional, occurs in English news headlines often. Therefore, a probe into the ambiguity in English news headlines is quite necessary.

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This paper puts forward that the news compilers should make great efforts to employ explicit headlines and prudently utilize intentional ambiguous headlines only when the compilers want to stir up the readers’ interest in some news that is worthy of particular attention.

Some ambiguous news headlines are listed in the thesis as support to the arguments and are used to explain how ambiguity occurs. The ambiguous headlines are collected from English newspapers or websites. They are mainly

from China Daily. Also some are from English news websites, such as New Y ork Times, The Times and The Guardian.

This thesis will elaborate this issue from three aspects: lexical ambiguity, grammatical ambiguity and functions of news headlines.

Chapter 1 deals with the issue from the angle of lexical ambiguity. The words used in headlines are distinct from those in other text genres. Without some fundamental knowledge of lexical features of headlines, confusion will arise among the readers. Polysemous words require the readers to identify the exact meaning from the context, for sometimes ambiguity comes forth if polysemous words are improperly used.

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Chapter 1 Lexical Ambiguity in English News Headlines

As a text genre, news headlines have their unique features. “Both words and sentences in English news headlines are characterized by succinctness and briefness”[1]. These characteristics can arouse some troubles in understanding the headlines clearly in the crowd of readers. This chapter deals with some lexically ambiguous headlines. The discussion of news headlines’features on lexical level is unfolded from the economy of word choice and emergence of neologism.

1.1Lexical Features of Headlines

The space left for news, either in the newspaper or on the internet, is limited.Lexically, English news headlines often employ midget words, abbreviations, acronyms and nominal groups to economize the use of words and as it has close contact with the current affairs, the vocabulary of news headlines develops fast with society, causing many neologisms to emerge in English news headline.

1.1.1 Economy of Word Choice

Midget words are favored by news headlines, such as:

(1) India woos big farms as it frets about $ 150 oil

(China Daily, Jan. 9, 2008)

(2) Ban on pig farming to go ahead: Official

(China Daily, Dec. 11, 2007)

注意例句都应给出来源出处。

文中指称例句都用序号，如下面划线的地方。

The words “woos”and “ban”in (1) and (2) are used as substitutes for “persuades”and“prohibition” respectively. By contrast, the midget words in the

examples can really save some space and the headlines sound more succinct.

Acronyms, words made up from the first letters of the name of something, are widely used to save words, such as:

(3) NDRC takes fight for green GDP to new level

(China Daily, Dec. 10, 2007)

Here “NDRC”and “GDP”refer to “National Development and Reform Commission” and “Gross Domestic Product” respectively.

(4) Former CEO takes helm of ROK

(China Daily, Dec. 20, 2007)

In (4), “CEO”means “Chief Executive Officer”and “ROK”means “Republic of Korea”.

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The ambiguity of this headline comes from the omission of the link verb “was”, which makes it liable to be interpreted as two meanings as follows:

(29) a. A couple was ordered to pay for the hurt caused by their footwear that fell onto someone else.

b. A couple who has ordered something in a marketplace or plaza will pay

for the footwear whose price is falling.

相关联的几个例句可用这种格式；英文和译文也可用此类格式；如译文短小，则可用括号在英文后给出。

The main idea of this piece of news is “A couple was having a fight in their

house upstairs. They were so agitated that they threw many things of each other out of their window. Thus, an accident happened. One footwear fell onto one passerby and made him hurt. Therefore, they were ordered to pay for the damage”. From this, it can be concluded that the meaning goes to the first kind.

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3.2.1 Effects Arising from Intentional Ambiguity 请注意下面引文格式

Intentional ambiguity is that the editor takes the positive advantage of elusive words or structural contradictions in language to achieve a certain effect. It either puns on a word or makes a feint to the east and attack in the west in order to achieve a special communicative effect. It is always arranged deliberately and takes the readers by surprise.

Intentional ambiguity is not few in news headlines, which may occupies 15

percent of ambiguous headlines,because in western news, the headline was seen as

the abbreviation of the whole passage, and editors usually use all kinds of tropes in

order to attract more readers[8].此处数字表示后面的注解序号

The headlines with intentional ambiguity can be more vivid and attract the attention of the readers. It is sometimes regarded as a way to bring magic and enjoyment into the experience of using information systems of all sorts. Intentional ambiguity shows the superiority of intelligence,

Conclusion

Ambiguity is common in natural language and it is a phenomenon that covers many fields. However, if there is ambiguity in news headlines, the readers has to read through the whole news to resolve ambiguity and get the proper meaning of the ambiguous headline. Therefore, the explicitness of the headline is very important. What’s more, in news headline writing, one important task for the compiler to fulfill is to fasten the gist of the news in order to assist the readers to identify which piece of news interests him most. If he thinks the news includes some shining points that are very important and cater for the readers, he could use intentionally ambiguous headlines to achieve the purpose that enough attention is called upon this piece of news.

As a specific linguistic phenomenon, ambiguity should be studied widely and deeply. Unintentional ambiguity will be a big barrier for effective communication, and should be avoided and resolved, whereas crafty application of ambiguity will achieve magic communicative effect. With a view to the distinctive lexical and grammatical features of English news headlines, while trying to employ the intentional ambiguity in news headline writing, the compiler should be very prudent lest it should be beyond the readers’comprehension. With regard to the functions of news headlines, namely the informative and attractive function, the task that the compiler should accomplish is to make a balance between them and optimize them as much as possible.

Due to the limitations in the research process, there are still some questions left unanswered.

1) Is there a criterion to determine when intentional ambiguous headlines should be adopted?

2) What is the relationship between pun and ambiguity？

All in all, probing into the ambiguity in the news headlines can benefit both the readers and the compiler, for it helps the readers to know more about the nature of ambiguity in English news headlines and urges the compiler to be more cautious in composing the headlines. Analyzing the ambiguity in English news headlines can benefit the readers in their understanding of what the compilers want to convey. Ambiguity reflects the complexity in language and it deserves to be further studied to make mutual communication clear-cut.

Notes

[1] 樊腾腾. 从目的论角度论英语新闻标题的翻译[D]. 广州：广东外语外贸大学，2006：10.

[2]刘舒展. 英语报刊标题歧义研究[D]. 济南：山东大学，2006：32. Further quotations from this thesis will be identified by page numbers from this edition.

[3][4] Ibid., 34.

[5] 吴丽萍. 英语新闻标题的语言特色[D]. 北京：对外经济贸易大学，2002：

2.

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Bibliography

Brain, S. Brooks. News Reporting and Writing[M]. New Y ork: St. Martin’s Press, 1992. Clarke, Stallworth. Headline puns are fun if carefully done[C]. The Bulletin of the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE), 1992 (11)：745-747.

Fredrickson, T.L & Wedel, P. F. English By Newspapers[M]. Massachusetts: Newbury House Publishers, 1984.

Hobenberg, John. The Professional Journalist[M]. New Y ork: Columbia University, 1973. Paula, Larocque. Choosing between open- and dead-end heads[J]. The Quill, 2000 (7)：78-79. Rayner, Phinip. Media Studies: the Essential Introduction[M]. London: Routledge, 2001.

樊腾腾. 从目的论角度论英语新闻标题的翻译[D]. 广州：广东外语外贸大学，2006.

郭影平. 英语报刊标题特点初探[J]. 上海理工大学学报，2003(4)：37-39.

黄敏. 英语新闻标题的特点[J]. 安徽农业大学学报，1998(3)：80-82.

刘舒展. 英语报刊标题歧义研究[D]. 济南：山东大学，2006.

邱述德. 英语歧义[M]. 北京：商务印书馆，1998.

吴丽萍. 英语新闻标题的语言特点[D]. 北京：对外经济贸易大学，2002.

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to all those who helped me during the writing of this paper.

I am most grateful to Mr. Chen who has helped me to shape the ideas that have gone into this paper. Thanks for his kindly guidance, comments and corrections of this paper. He has provided me with valuable insights and constructive suggestions. I have benefited a lot from the experience.

What’s more, I would extend my sincere thanks to all the teachers that have taught me over the four years in the English Department. I have benefited a lot in their class.

Finally, my gratitude also goes to my dear roommates who have given me so much inspirations and self-giving assistance, especially Beth.