A Corpus-based Study On Discursive Construction Of Guizhou’s Image In The British And American Mainstream Newspapers

In recent years,China has been enhancing the cultural soft power and supporting efforts to share Chinese culture with other countries.The construction of China’s national image has been taken to a new strategic height.But China’s image has long been dominated by Western powerful discourse system.The study of China’s others-shaping image would take on far-reaching significance for improving this current status of the passive others-shaping image,fostering a sound public opinion environment and disseminating the better China’s national image.Regional image is an epitome of its national one.Guizhou Province is rapidly developing and has drawn great attention.Guizhou is undergoing major changes and expanding its global presence.Guizhou’s others-shaping image would,to some extent,reflect China’s others-shaping one.Therefore,the thesis searched and collected news on Guizhou in British and American mainstream newspapers including The Times,The Independent,The Guardian,The New York Times and The Washington Post and constructed the Corpus of News Report on Guizhou in British and American mainstream newspapers（CNRG）.These published news articles are dated from 2001 to 2019.On the basis of quantitative analysis with the combination of critical discourse analysis,the thesis attempts to explore the Guizhou’s image in the British and American mainstream news discourse and the relevant discursive features and tries to delve into the hidden ideological reasons for the discursive construction.The thesis adapted Fairclough’s Three-dimensional Framework as the theoretical framework with the integration of certain approaches in Corpus Linguistics including collocation network,key semantic domain and concordance,giving a deep insight into the news discourse.The thesis concluded that（1）in the description stage,the overall Guizhou’s images are negative in CNRG.There only exist few neutral or positive images.The media center on Guizhou’s geographical attributes,economic development,city names,local government,education and medical condition of local rural areas,science and technology,and social law and order.More emphasis is put on Guizhou’s negative image of long-standing impoverished condition.They also frame a crisis-ridden city image as well as the remote rural image with the demonstration of poor educational,living and medical conditions.But Guizhou’s geographical image is neutrally depicted.The media tend to present its image of science ad technology positively,especially that of Chinese “sky-eye”,alluding to China’s positive national image of technology.Meanwhile,the promising image for rural development and positive one for Guiyang’s economy are also built.（2）In the interpretation stage,the media are inclined to apply neutral reporting verbs,holding certain objective reporting tendency.The application of their various tenses or voices also reflects the ideological interference of the reporter.The media also have a preference for the usage of speech act reporting verbs with the most variety for the sake of the interaction and dialogue with the prior speech and the subjective intervention in this public opinion.The frequency of mental reporting verbs is the least.The reporting news sources present a diversified trend.The quotation of much speech from general public who are entrusted with more discourse powers enhances the intertextuality of news reports.Moreover,the media frequently employ specified news sources,to some extent,in the pursuit of news authenticity and accuracy.There also appear some unspecified sources with implicit expressions,especially when concerning the sensitive political issues or governmental regulations.Unidentifiable news sources are few.（3）In the explanation stage,it can be found that these respects of national economic strength,institutional or political contexts,social and cultural backgrounds shed light on the reporting inclination and ideological reasons hidden behind the discursive features of these news reports.The thesis would provide some methodological implications for critical discourse analysis,broaden and deepen the relevant studies of image.It is also hoped to make a reference for the discursive construction of Guizhou’s positive image even the China’s positive one in publicity,promoting exchanges with foreign news media and fostering a more favorable climate of public opinion.