Sports are the signs of social civilization. With the globalization of econolny and the development of communicative technology, sports become an indispensable part of our social and cultural life and have been attracting more and more attention, from the perspectives of field, tenor and mode, newspaper sports news has become a kind of special sub-genre of journalistic text. However, it has not drawn much attention from linguists. Former researches are conducted mainly from traditional stylistic perspective. On the basis of systemic-functional grammar theories, the author collects samples from domestic and foreign influential English newspapers "China Daily" (English version) and makes quantitative analysis by applying the three metafunctions of Halliday's systemic-functional theories, namely experiential function, interpersonal function and textual function.
Through the further analysis of the statistical data combined with examples drawn from the sample texts in transitivity, voice, mood, modality, thematic structure and thematic progression, the linguistic features of English newspaper sports news are elicited. The analysis of Transitivity system reveals the realization of the field of sports news is through the different processes selected in the texts. In sports news, material processes appear most frequently;relational and verbal processes are sometimes used; mental processes are infrequently used;which shows the central function of sports news is to report sports events and supply background information. The analysis of Mood system unveils tenor of sports news is mainly through the choice of full declarative mood, modality expressions such as modal verbs, modal adjuncts and appraisable words, which make the interpersonal distance between the participants, become less and an intimate atmosphere between friends has been cr eated.
In tense, past tense is mainly used to report the events, and present tense is sometimes used to increase timeliness, freshness and immediacy of the report. Future tense rarely appears. The simple theme is in main use and unmarked themes are used much more than marked themes. Constant theme pattern and constant rheme pattern are mainly used. The findings of this thesis indicate the Systemic-Functional approach to the study of sports news is powerful in that the relationship between situational context and linguistic realizations can be exploited thoroughly and expressed clearly. The analysis on this news sub-style helps to understand the choice of news language and the function it realizes, which leads to a better comprehension and a thorough grasp of the news characters. It is hoped that the present study will contribute to the better understanding and writing of sports news reporting.
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