This paper here tends to explore referring expressions in Chinese news headlines to analyze the pragmatic effect of the referring expressions with the purpose of proposing some advices on linguistic choices in writing news headlines. 论文网

1．1 Research object

The research object of this paper is referring expressions in Chinese news headlines. Similar terms will be differentiated and explanation will be given on the specific use of the term “referring expressions” in this study.

1.1.1  Deixis

Deixis is a type of linguistic expressions which possess a certain contextual trait themselves and their referents are decided by the context. Levinson (1983: 33) put forward five types of deixis which include: person deixis, time deixis, place deixis, social deixis and discourse deixis (the previous…, etc.). 

Person deixis refers to the participant encoded in the discourse activity or is the symbol of relevant role. It comprises personal pronouns (he, she), adjectival possessive pronoun (his, her), nominal possessive pronoun (his, hers), and proper names, titles, social characters under special circumstances, namely honorific expression, such as “My wife (=She) will have a cheeseburger”. 

Time deixis refers to the time mentioned when speaker and hearer convey information by conversations, such as now, yesterday, today and inflectional affix -ed that indirectly presents the time. 

Place deixis includes directional adverbial there, here and words like go, come that suggests a connotative place. 

Social deixis is a kind of structure or words that are very closely connected with interpersonal relationships. The purpose of using it is to change, adapt or adjust the relationship between speaker and the third person. Examples are like Professor, Majesty, etc. However, social deixis also refers to the person eventually. It seems very likely to be a sort of honorific. Chen and Peng (1994: 34) proposed that it is necessary to cancel the social deixis type. The reason is that the vast majority of structures or words discussed within the definition of social deixis are included by person deixis. Besides, putting social deixis into the person deixis type does good to the study of person deixis in the context of social communication. So, this paper will take this notion and discuss person deixis and social deixis together. 文献综述

Discourse deixis refers to the kind of words that deliver contextual referential information in the discourse. Levinson (1983: 33) said that it does not link the grammar to the pragmatic information, and it is unable to conduct the lexical description. And if lexicon is incomplete, let alone the syntax, semantics or phoneme etc. Words --- oh, so, well, the previous --- are used to convey contextual meaning. Due to the fact that the discourse deixis is highly dependent on the context while news headlines are of briefness and ellipsis, very possibly phrases, this paper will not take this type into discussion. 

1.1.2  Reference 

Halliday and Hasan (1976: 94) proposed five categories of cohesion. They are reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion. Reference describes a sort of phenomenon that the semantic meaning of some words can not be grasped from themselves but refer to other element to get the meaning. And reference includes personal reference, demonstrative reference and comparative reference. 

Personal reference and person deixis is almost the same thing although difference exists. And in this paper they both are categorized into personal referring expressions. Demonstrative reference includes this, that, here, there and now, then and so on. Generally it refers to time and place. Also similar to time deixis and place deixis. And in this paper, they are altogether formed into demonstrative referring expressions. Comparative reference is a referential relationship which conducted by the comparative form of adjective and adverb, and other words which can convey a comparative meaning. For example, the same as, similar to, different etc. is of this kind. Comparative reference is still very dependent on the context and this paper which primarily focuses on the headlines will not discuss it. 来!自~优尔论-文|网www.youerw.com