A Contrastive Analysis Of Engagement Resources In The Chinese And American News Reports On The Sino-US Trade Tensions

This thesis investigates the distribution of the engagement resources in Chinese and American news reports on the Sino-US trade tensions with Ant Conc as the analytic tool so as to ascertain the stances and attitudes of the two parties towards the trade tensions.The corpus built for this study includes 86 pieces news reports collected from China Daily,New York Times and the Washington Post,altogether 64,862 words（32,450 words from the Chinese media,32,412 words from the American media）during two periods.One is from July 6^th,2018 to July 16^th 2018 when the trade tensions almost reached its highest point and the other is from June 24^th 2019 to July 4^th 2019 around the first stage agreement achieved by the two parties.The research shows that there are abundant engagement resources in both Chinese and American media reports during the two periods which help to construct dramatically different stances and attitudes towards the bilateral disputes on trade.The statistical analysis made it clear that during the fiercest stage of the trade tensions from July 6^th,2018 to July 16^th,2018 the proportion of dialogic expansion in China Daily is 1.8 times more than that of dialogic contraction as compared with 1.6times in American media.Both Chinese and American media open the dialogic space about the trade tensions during this time.When China and the U.S.agreed to achieve a truce for the first time,the dialogic expansion resources are 2.3 times as many as dialogic contraction resources in Chinese media.In contrast,the ratio in American media is 1.3 times.In other words,Chinese media prefer to accept the possible viewpoints about the truce of the trade tensions while American media don’t.As for dialogic expansion,both Chinese and American media prefer to employ modal auxiliaries.Among attribution resources,both media trend to use external voices from authorities.In dialogic contraction,the denial resources in Chinese media are more than counter-expectancy resources while it is completely opposite in American media in2018 which implies that Chinese media would like to reject the propositions about the trade tensions directly while American media prefer to replace the propositions with other stances.Compared with denial resources,the media on both sides use more counter-expectancy resources in 2019 so that the propositions about the trade tensions are replaced with other viewpoints.In addition,the proportions of endorsement in the news discourses of the two countries are larger than those of concurrence and pronouncement during two periods of time.Chinese media illustrate the willingness of negotiation while American media present the uncertainties of the truce.Chinese media focus on the expectation of solving the trade tensions with negotiation and dialogue while American media view the truce unfavorably.It is more intuitive to investigate the stances and positions of Chinese and American media with engagement resources so as to make contributions to expand the application of appraisal theory on political news discourses.