SUBSTITUTION IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE BRIEF NEWS

Abstract

Identifying or using substitution in discourse has always been a challenge to Vietnamese learners of English. So this paper is an attempt to deal with finding and classifying substitution devices in English and Vietnamese as a discourse. With the examples of brief news in English and Vietnamese collected, we have explored some linguistic features of substitution such as the types of substitution: nominal substitution, adverbial substitution, verbal substitution and clausal substitution, and the similarities and differences of substitution between English and Vietnamese in terms of syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Besides, quantitative analyses have also been carried out to show how English and Vietnamese people use substitution in English and Vietnamese brief news. The findings lay the foundations of implications for teaching and learning substitution devices in discourse in general and in brief news in particular. In addition, this research helps learners of the two languages achieve better communicative competence