An Intertextual Approach To Cross-Strait English News Reports Concerning The SCS Dispute

Along with the discovery of rich resources in the South China Sea in 1970s, certain countries of East Asia began to challenge China on the sovereignty and maritime interests of this area. Moreover, the intervention of outside powers including United States and Japan has complicated the situation in South China Sea. The South China Sea and its peaceful solution are of vital significance and even more with China’s "marine power" strategy. In the South China Sea dispute, Taiwan’s sensitive stance is special. On one hand, the mainland of China and Taiwan are similar in policy and stance, therefore the cooperation across the strait is beneficial to both parties, contributing to the peaceful solution of this dispute. On the other hand, Taiwan, affected by its separatist force and intervention of United States, has multi-concerns about cross-strait cooperation in the South China Sea, which adds more uncertainty to the peaceful solution. From the perspective of intertextuality, reported speech in particular, the research examines the hidden stance and focuses behind the text in South China Sea English reports of the mainland of China and Taiwan, by means of diachronic studies, comparative studies."Intertextuality" is a concept brought up by French semiotician Kristeva in 1967 with reference to Saussure’s sign system and Baktin’s theory of dialogism. As a special perspective of discourse analysis, it attempts to analyze and assess on the function, meaning and value of the whole discourse through the inter-relation between one text and others. Reported speech is a main and important form of intertextuality, and by analyzing its form and content, the ideology and social power behind it can be revealed.The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one is an introduction of the background, purpose, significance and methodology of the research as well as the literature review. Chapter two makes a survey of the findings of scholars home and abroad on South China Sea dispute in recent years. Chapter three is about the study of intertextuality and reported speech. Chapter four studies the reported speech in Xinhua Net and Taiwan Today’s news reports through quantitative method and comparative method and illustrates the main findings of the study; meanwhile it points out the hidden stances and focuses of the mainland of China and Taiwan. Chapter five concludes the research, summarizing the findings and limitations of the research. Suggestions are also offered for further studies.The research reveals that the mainland of China and Taiwan are same in the main direction of speech reporting pattern, though they are different in some specific issues. Those similarities and differences should reflect their stances and focuses on the issue. The mainland of China attaches great importance on its sovereignty with clear bottom line and becomes more active and even "tough". Under the current situation, it adopts a "dual track" strategy to settle this issue and strongly opposes to interventions of outside powers. Taiwan has clear claims yet it takes low-profile measures; it is gradually marginalized in the dispute and swings between the mainland of China and United States; it has little trust in the mainland and seeks to maximize its interests with an ambiguous attitude. The author stresses that Taiwan, confronting with the current dilemma, would probably start seeking for cross-strait cooperation in non-political fields and would limit the cooperation only on the South China Sea issue. Moreover, Taiwan would not give up the support from the United States in years to come; this is a hard fact that the mainland of China must be aware of.