Chapter 1．Introduction
1.1 Rationale and Significance of the Study
News headlines are considered as the eyes of newspapers, through which readerscan get the generalizations and assessments of news content. The language of newsheadlines is special and is characterized by its own features. As we all know, everylanguage definitely changes with the development of the society. Therefore, for onething, to know the language changes of news headlines can help to better understandthe language connotations in newspapers; for another, a diachronic study of languagechanges in news headlines over years can also reflect the trajectory of the political,social and cultural developments of a country.China Daily, established in 1981, is the first and the most influential nationalEnglish newspaper published in the People’s Republic of China since its founding. Itis often called “the window of China”, and is served as an important source forforeign readers to know more about Chinese politics, economy, culture and society. Adiachronic study of China Daily is helpful for a deep insight into the changes in use ofEnglish after the implementation of reform and opening up policy in China. What ismore, it can also conduce to reveal the changes of China over years in all respects,including the development of the society, the progress in economic development, thechanges of views on both international and domestic situations and so forth.Adaptation Theory, proposed by J. Verschueren, is a relatively new pragmatictheory. Though the theory has been applied widely by scholars both at home andabroad, few researches have been conducted on language changes of news headlinesfrom this theoretical angle. Hence, application of Adaptation Theory to explain thecauses of language changes of news headlines in this diachronic study can help tobroaden the researching range of the theory.
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1.2 Research Questions
This study aims to answer the following three questions:1. What are the characteristics of news headlines in China Daily from 1981 to2014?2. What are the changes in language use during these more than thirty years?3. What might be the causes of these changes?
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Chapter 2．Literature Review
2.1 News Headlines
Headline is any line or collection of lines of display that precedes a story tointroduce or summarize it (Westley, 1971:141). News headlines are indispensable toany newspaper. Appearing in front of the whole news reports, news headlines areusually printed in larger size, and can be viewed as generalizations and assessments ofnews content. Good news headlines can not only extract the essence from news facts,but also draw readers’ attention and make them interested in reading the whole newscontent.Since the features of English news headlines and Chinese news headlines are notsimilar to each other, the thesis only reviews the features of English news headlinesdue to the research object. The main features of news headlines lie in 5 aspects,namely wording, tense, voice, omission and sentence structure.News headlines should generalize the maximum content in limited space, and beconcise and easy for readers to read (Li & Zhang, 1993:42). Therefore, wording innews headlines usually prefers midget words. For example, verbs such as “mar”,“top” and “rap” are often used in replacement of “damage”, “exceed”, and “criticize”.Besides, abbreviations and acronyms are also used widely. The usage of abbreviationsis one of the basic features of news headlines due to the principle of economy. Forexample, numbers such as “million” and “billion” are simplified as “m” and “bn”.Other clipped words include “sub”, “vs.”, “Mt.”, “N-test” and the like. Acronyms alsogreatly exist in news headlines, for example, “CPC”, “CPPCC”, “PLO”, “WTO”,“CIA” and so forth.
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2.2 Previous Studies on English News Headlines
Studies on English news headlines have achieved a lot of results as scholars bothabroad and at home probe into this field from various perspectives. Approaches to theana
