Abstract
A recurrent problem in contrastive studies of texts is to determine how much variation between one text and another is sufficient to determine that the two are different texts. This study of five consecutive days of three editions of the same newspaper in its Chinese and English editions, the People's Daily ( Overseas and Home editions) and the China Daily, shows that while there is much insignificant variability, on the basis of eight significant features, page placement, headline, textual frame, point of view, tone, quotation, formulas, and vocabulary, it is possible to distinguish five distinct genres of news stories in these newspapers. This clear generic differentiation within a single newspaper organization's three editions indicates much caution must be exercised in making contrastive discourse analyses across newspapers to control for comparing like genres. Further, caution must be exercised in drawing higher level inferences about linguistic, cognitive, or social practices when such generic control is absent.
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