Ecological Discourse Analysis Of News Reports On Sino-US Trade Frictions

This thesis is based on Halliday’s interpersonal function system to establish ecological mood and modality systems from the ecological perspective,takes the revised system as the theoretical framework and under the guidance of the ecosophy“Equality,Harmony and Co-existence”,conducts an EDA of thirty news reports on Sino-US trade frictions from China Daily(hereinafter referred to as CD)and the Washington Post(hereinafter referred to as WP),with the purposes of presenting similarities and differences between CD and WP and revealing ecological values of international ecological factors in the discourse.As shown in this study,mood types in WP are diversified,and non-declaratives used for the realization of the speech function “giving information” reflect the usage of interpersonal metaphors.Besides,group human factors appear much more frequently in WP than CD.On the basis of obeying or disobeying the ecosophy “Equality,Harmony and Co-existence”,ecological values in discourses are classified as the beneficial value,the neutral value and the destructive value.In CD,the beneficial value is obviously dominant and it appears more frequently in CD than WP,revealing that CD tends to show beneficial meanings such as hoping to deal with Sino-US trade frictions peacefully and maintaining the harmony and stability of the international ecosystem,and has realized the function of psychological comfort better.Compared with CD,WP presents higher percentages of destructive and neutral values,reflecting the decentralized distribution and the diversity of ecological values.At the same time,in two newspapers,the distributions of ecological values presented by ecological factors are also different,mainly in the balanced distribution of beneficial values and other values shown by American ecological factors,revealing the substantial divergence within American ecological factors’ opinions towards Sino-US trade frictions.In terms of ecological EMR,low EMR appears much more frequently in CD than WP and CD only uses implicit objective orientation and ultra-objective modality respectively for median EMR and low EMR in neutral and destructive discourses,which reflects CD’s tendency to disguise personal opinions of reporters and pursue objectivity.Compared with CD,WP demonstrates the decentralized distribution of EMR and the diversity of expression.It can be proved by the discovery that WP is still willing to take high EMR for neutral and destructive values,which highlights personal stances and opinions of the reporters.All in all,this study provides an EDA explanation for the linguistic researches on Sino-US trade frictions reportage,which shows certain revealing insight in this research domain.