A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Intertextuality In Chinese And American News Reports On Amazon Rainforest Fires

Intertextuality is an intrinsic attribute of discourse,pointing out that all texts are produced through the absorption and transformation of another text.Critical discourse analysis explores the ideological meanings behind linguistic structures and reveals the relationship among discourse,power and ideology.In recent years,despite of the large number of studies conducted,there are issues to be solved.For example,corpus-based analyses occupy a low proportion,research data are not fully analyzed and news discourse on natural disasters receives inadequate attention.In terms of intertextuality studies,there are problems like the narrow research scope and researchers’ negligence of the relationship between discourse and external environment.Therefore,this paper takes Fairclough’s three-dimensional model as the theoretical framework to analyze the news discourse on natural disasters and selects series reports about Amazon rainforest fires in China Daily and New York Times.Among them,41 reports were collected from China Daily,with a total of 15416 words,and 13 reports were selected from New York Times,with a total of 15349 words.As the research should focus on the whole,the similar total word number with the same time span could provide a sufficient corpus for this study.This research intends to answer three research questions:(1)what are the features of intertextuality in Chinese and American news reports on natural disasters?(2)what power and ideology are reflected by the features of intertextuality in Chinese and American news reports on natural disasters?(3)what cultural and political elements account for the power and ideology implied in Chinese and American news reports on natural disasters?In order to answer the research questions,this paper analyzed reporting verbs,reporting modes and source origin of intertextuality.At the level of text,this paper used quantitative methods to describe the features of reporting verbs,reporting modes and source origin,with several examples presented.At the level of discursive practice,based on the intertextual features and content of previous samples,this paper explored the ideology and power by qualitative methods.At the level of social practice,this paper discussed the political and cultural factors accounting for the ideology and power.As for the features of intertextuality,the results are as follows.In terms of reporting verbs,neutral reporting verbs occupy the first place in both newspapers.The proportion of negative reporting verbs is bigger than that of positive reporting verbs in China Daily,but their distributions are quite the opposite in New York Times.In terms of reporting modes,the proportion of indirect speech ranks the first,and direct speech the second in both corpora.In terms of source origin,the proportion of specified source origin is the highest,semi-specified source origin the second,and unidentified source origin the lowest in both newspapers.As for ideology and power relations reflected by features of intertextuality,the research findings are as follows.Environmentally,both newspapers convey the idea of maintaining harmony between men and nature and stress the importance of ecological health.In addition,New York Times reflects the American society’s emphasis on rules.Politically,China Daily tends to support the Brazilian government’s struggle whereas New York Times highlights the harmful effects of deforestation,the conflicts between Brazil and European countries,and the partial loss of the Amazon rainforest caused by exports to China.The news media choose appropriate content to present to readers and transmit the mainstream ideology to the audience,which reflects the unequal power relations.In terms of cultural and political factors,the findings are as follows.On the cultural side,Chinese collectivism and American individualism contribute to the ideology and power.On the political side,the good partnership between China and Brazil and the delicate relationship among the United States,Brazil,European countries and China also explain the ideology and power.This study discusses ideology,power relations and hidden political and cultural factors contrastively.It is a helpful complement to the intertextuality studies.However,there are still limitations in this study.Firstly,the scale of the corpus is not large enough.Secondly,the researcher’s nationality will slightly affect the judgment in the analysis.Nevertheless,it is hoped that more researchers can make contributions to the critical discourse analysis of natural disaster news reports.