A comparative analysis of Chinese News headline language of Hong Kong and Taiwan

Abstract

The study of newspaper headlines as well as news media discourse nowadays is not solely confined to the field of journalism. It has also aroused multidisciplinary interests, such as psychology (Perfetti et al., 1986, 1987) and linguistics (Chu, 1993; Sung, 19931 Chin, 1998a, 1998b, Chin & Tsou, 1999 and among others). This thesis examined the language of Chinese news headlines from two perspectives: (1) To explore the linguistic properties of this type of genre from a synchronic and quantitative approach; (2) To compare these linguistic features between Hong Kong and Taiwan headlines with respect to some extra-linguistic factors. On the basis of a one-year collection of synchronous news headlines from Hong Kong and Taiwan, it was found that Chinese headline language is distinctive from other genres lexically and syntactically. Several innovative syntactic patterns found in news headlines were shown to have been spreading into general textual discourse. Furthermore, the differential manifestation of these new patterns in the two communities can reveal their socio-culture, such as the degree of global awareness, of the two communities. It was shown that, Hong Kong, in general, is more outward looking compared to Taiwan but the latter is more domestically oriented (Chin, 1998b; Tsou & Chin, 1999a).

Date of Award	16 Oct 2000
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Ka Yin Benjamin T'SOU (Supervisor)