CONTENTSChapter One：Contrastive discourse：The problem of setting func-tionally contrastive frames 1
Section 1：Information Sequence and Rhetoric 15
Chapter Two：Topic-comment or modifier-modified？Information structure in modern standard Chinese 16
Chapter Three：Information sequence and rhetoric in a genre of ex-tended spoken discourse 37
Chapter Four：Information sequence and rhetoric in letters of request 72
Chapter Five：Information sequence and rhetoric in Chinese argu-ment 93
Section 2：Traditional and Contemporary Writing 121
Chapter Six：Traditional Chinese text structures and their influence on the writing in Chinese and English of contemporary mainland Chinese students 122
Chapter Seven：Eight legs and one elbow：Stance and structure in Taiwan Chinese English compositions 140
Chapter Eight：Writing expository essays in Chinese．Chinese or western influences？ 158
Chapter Nine：Are they really so different？A look at the Chinese university entrance exams 170
Section 3：Comparative News Discourse 179
Chapter Ten：Structural differences in functionally equivalent texts：Perspective，frame and focus in Chinese and English news stories 180
Chapter Eleven：A contrastive analysis of Chinese and English ver-sion of a news story 210
Chapter Twelve：Point of view and citation：Fourteen Chinese and English versions of the‘same'news story 232
Chapter Thirteen：Generic variability in news stories in Chinese and English：A contrastive discourse study of five days'news-papers 256
Conclusion 289
Chapter Fourteen：Contrastive rhetoric，contrastive poetics，or per-haps something else？ 290
References 302
Appendices 322