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The Times once released a piece of news with following headline: Holmes’ Smarter Brother Joins Police. The author takes the new computer system which could help the police to solve cases as “Holmes’ brother”. The readers of this news may not have adequate knowledge of computer science; however they are probably familiar with Holmes and his amazing detection story. The headline employs metaphor to help the readers to understand the advantage of the computer system mentioned in the news.
4. Comparison of Rhetoric between English News Headlines and Chinese News Headlines
As two languages that share totally nothing in common, English and Chinese are enormously different from each other. Specifically speaking, in news headlines, one of the differences between English and Chinese is the pergence between the applications of rhetoric.
In English news headlines, the application of rhetoric concentrates on the task of how to express the content of the news in a concise, humorous, remarkable and eye-catching way. To reach this goal, abbreviation and artificial vocabulary are massively used in English news headlines. Besides, aiming at making headlines more vivid and attractive, active voice is far more frequently used than passive voice in rhetoric in English news headlines.
Chinese news headlines not only concentrate on the appropriate application of grammar and rhetoric, but also make the best effort to demonstrate the beauty of reality, persity, rhythm, strength, structure and artistic conception in the headlines by using rhetoric. Rhetoric in Chinese news headlines attaches high importance to the research of its reader group. The authors of Chinese news headlines consider the creation of headlines from a number of prospects, in order to best reach the core of the news content, show the value of the information and demonstrate the beauty of the connotation. Considering about the readers of the news, they also choose the most attractive and acceptable angle to create news headlines.
In order to give a clear comparison of the application of rhetoric in English news headlines and Chinese news headlines, the following part of this paper will demonstrate the difference in the application of the same rhetoric between English news headlines and Chinese news headlines. This paper selects metaphor, pun and parody as the samples.
4.1 Metaphor in English News Headlines and Chinese News Headlines
U.S. News and World Report once posted an article discussing contemporary political system in Canada. The headline of this article was “A House in Two Parts”, in which the author took the whole Canada as a huge house. But the house is made up by two different parts. This metaphor was mainly talking about the differences in language, culture, tradition and jurisdiction system between English-speaking region and French-speaking region in Canada. It also discussed the irrational and unstable criteria in political system of Canada. The metaphor in this headline was not only concise but also vivid, which made abstractive case specific and imaginable. It helped readers to understand the content better as well.
In Chinese news headlines there is similar application of rhetoric. “Sunset Like Flame——Story about the 78-year-old Xie Yurong, member of CCP”(《夕阳如火——记凌海市农村78岁女党员谢玉荣》)was the headline of an interview news. This metaphor could be disassembled into two levels. The author firstly took sunset to describe the heroine as in her old age, and then took sunset as flame. The whole headline was trying to express that the heroine was retired but not tired, she kept making contribution to the society at her old age.