A Contrastive Study of Some Common Textual Patterns of Disease Outbreak Online News in English and Vietnamese

Abstract

The study is conducted to investigate the common textual patterns and their signaling devices and to find out the similarities and differences of these issues in English and Vietnamese diseases outbreak online news. Correspondingly, three research questions are raised, which are (1) What kinds of textual pattern are commonly used in disease outbreak online news in English and Vietnamese? (2) What are the signaling devices that help to identify textual patterns in disease outbreak online news in English and Vietnamese? (3) What are the similarities and differences between textual patterns and signaling devices of disease outbreak online news in English and Vietnamese? In order to answer the research questions, the researcher combines different methods of data analysis (quantitative, qualitative, descriptive and contrastive). The research is conducted on 100 news on diseases outbreak, half of which are in English and the other half are in Vietnamese. The result reveals that the most common textual pattern in both English and Vietnamese is Problem – Solution. General – Particular pattern ranks the second with a much smaller percentage. Question - Answer is only found in Vietnamese news. The other patterns do not exist in the surveyed news. Regarding signaling devices, there are two kinds: lexical signals (noun, verb, adjective, adverb) and structural signals (changes in verb form).