A Contrastive Study Of Attitude Resources In The Sino-American Coverage Of COVID-19

Public health emergencies have always been hot topics across the world,as they pose tremendous threats to society.The first case of strange pneumonia-like disease was detected and reported by Wuhan Municipal Health Commission in December 2019.The number of new confirmed cases in foreign countries has started to exceed that of cases confirmed in China since February 28 th,2020.At present,domestic and foreign media have been flooding into social platforms that are relevant to the spread of the epidemic,where readers can spot multiple linguistic systems and divergent social opinions.The diversification of digital media and information exchange platforms have therefore triggered an unprecedented “infodemic”.Although some scholars have done relevant studies about the coverage of COVID-19,what has rarely been investigated till now,at least,in linguistics,is the comparative studies of COVID-19 coverage from the perspective of Attitude resources within Appraisal Theory.Appraisal Theory consists of Attitude,Engagement,and Graduation,in which Attitude is at the core.Under the background of COVID-19,Attitude subcategory can better reflect attitudinal tendency of China and America toward the pandemic.Therefore,this thesis aims to study the similarities and/or differences in the use of Attitude resources in Chinese and American newspapers and explore their attitudinal tendency on COVID-19.Setting from December 31 st,2019 to January 8th,2021,this thesis collects 40 coronavirus news reports in total from China Daily and The New York Times.UAM Corpus Tool 3.3p is introduced to code,annotate,and analyze the data with the built-in Appraisal Theory.Then,further discussion on the similarities and/or differences of the use of Attitude resources and their stance toward COVID-19 in China Daily and The New York Times is elaborated based on quantitative and qualitative analysis.Specifically,the study attempts to investigate three questions: 1)What is the overall distribution of Attitude resources in the Sino-American coverage of COVID-19? 2)What are similarities and/or differences in the use of each subcategory of three semantic regions(Affect,Judgment,and Appreciation)among Attitude resources in the SinoAmerican coverage of COVID-19? 3)Due to the similarities and/or discrepancies in the distribution of Attitude resources,what are similarities and/or differences of their stance on COVID-19 in the Sino-American coverage of COVID-19?The research findings are as follows: 1)Three subcategories of Attitude resources are employed by China Daily and The New York Times,in which Affect resources occupy the smallest percentage.The difference is that China Daily employs more Attitude resources than The New York Times,from which the most popular evaluation goes to Judgment in China Daily,but to Appreciation in The New York Times.2)In/security resources prevail over other subcategories in the Affect type in both China Daily and The New York Times.The difference is that China Daily holds a positive stance on the situation of COVID-19;The New York Times,however,takes the opposite view.Tenacity resources in Judgment system stand in the first place in China Daily,while capacity resources occupy the first place in The New York Times.In terms of Appreciation system,the number of valuation resources outweighs that of composition and reaction resources.3)The similarity is that realizations of the most Affect resources are achieved by “process”,among which in/security resources have the highest proportion in two sides,reflecting fears and worries brought by the unexpected virus and the inadequate measures.However,the difference is that China Daily expresses their confidence in controlling the virus and appreciation to the assistance of Chinese government and international communities.The New York Times indicates feelings of dissatisfaction and distrust to different countries,as well as to America itself.As for Judgment system,China Daily recognizes the policies and measures taken by both Chinese government and other countries in fighting the epidemic and characterize their behaviors as commendable and law abiding.More negativity is found in The New York Times,from which it criticizes government from China,America,and other countries for their incapacity.In addition,it even attributes the global transmission to the deliberate actions of Chinese government.Under Appreciation system,both acknowledge the severity of the pandemic itself in order to arouse public reaction.However,valuation resources(effectiveness,timeliness,and significance)are largely used by China Daily to demonstrate the positive contribution of China and international communities;but referred by The New York Times to express negative social values brought by the terrifying virus itself and the ineffective measures from the government.In conclusion,Affect resources are mainly used to express emotional reaction to the pandemic globally;Judgment resources are largely employed by both sides to make positive/negative evaluation of government and other relevant subjects;Appreciation resources tend to focus on the complexity of the pandemic itself and the effectiveness/ineffectiveness of the behavioral process of government.This thesis is significant from both theoretical and practical aspects.Theoretically,this study creates more scope for the study of public health events,that is,researchers can conduct text analysis of the news report from the perspective of linguistics.Practically,this study is helpful for language learners to improve their language level and teachers to cultivate students’ reading and appreciation ability.Meanwhile,this study may help learners figure out ideologies behind the news and improve their critical reading ability.