1.Introduction
　　According to Fairclough(1995:2),news media have great influences on people’s knowledge,beliefs and values,social relationship,as well as social status.And the influences depend mainly on the use of language.
　　When we read news reports,our attention will be aroused and interest perks up when come across the quotation marks scattered wherever in the news reports,most of which are used as signals of direct quotations.Since“learning how language operates in news reports is of great importance for the understanding of the social functions of news language”(Fan Hong,2003:62),learning how quotations function in news reports can also be of great help in the understanding of the social functions of news reports about every fields of world,like politics,health and disease, education,military affairs and so on.The author will illustrate what is the proportion of direct,indirect,partial quotation in China Daily and The New York Times.
　　2.Data Analysis
　　The following two graphs give us a glance at the total number of direct,indirect and partial quotations in 100 pieces of news from China Daily and another 100 from The New York Times.
　　Graph 1 The Data of the 3 Kinds of Quotations in China Daily
　　Graph 2 The Data of the 3 Kinds of Quotations in The New York Times
　　Graph 1 shows us that, indirect quotations appear in China Daily more often than direct quotations, totally 544 direct quotations are employed in 100 pieces of news,and counting 53.74% in the three kinds of quotations,15.30% higher than indirect quotations. The partial quotation is the lowest.
　　While,Graph 2 represents that,according to The New York Times,indirect counting 49.06%,only higher 6.2 percentage points than direct quotations. The number of partial quotation is the lowest.
　　Graph 3 and Graph 4will show the percentage frequencies of direct,indirect and partial quotations in two newspapers.
　　We could infer that the percentage of indirect quotations, counting 22.77% in China Daily is larger than direct quotations, counting 16.20%. Partial quotations, counting 3.4%. For New York Times, the percentage of indirect quotations, counting 17.4%, is a little bit higher than direct quotations, counting 15.12%, the partial quotations counting the least, 2.95%.
3.Conclusion
　　From the previous studies on quotations in newspapers, the focus is mainly on the hot topics or headlines. Some researches show that the using frequency of direct and indirect quotations in China Daily is much smaller than that in The New York Times. The present research takes direct, indirect and partial quotations in China Daily and The New York Times as its research objects. Based on the quantitative analysis,three main findings are achieved as follows:
　　Firstly, the amount of the quotations is considerable in China Daily and The New York Times and they are widely used in no matter what topic the piece of news is on.
　　Secondly, in two newspapers, the percentage of indirect quotations is higher than direct quotations, and more superior to partial quotations. The percentage frequency of direct, indirect and partial quotations in China Daily all outweigh the three quotations in The New York Times.
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