A Contrastive Study Of China Image Constructed By Chinese And American News Reports On COVID-19 From The Perspective Of Transitivity

With the fast spread of COVID-19 around the world,it has been declared “a public health emergency of international concern” by WHO and become the focus of media.News reports on COVID-19 have become important means to construct the China Image in the global world.The previous studies on COVID-19 discourses are conducted mostly from the perspective of journalism and communication,but few from the transitivity perspective.In this study,the transitivity system provides an important basis for semantic realization in the study of China Image construction,and enhances the rationality of image construction.In order to study the China Images based on the transitivity theory,the corpus is used because corpus linguistics shares the feature of SFL in language system and functional selection.The accumulation of one feature shows reporter’s attitudes.This thesis applies corpus method to explore the China Image by analyzing the distribution and the realizations of transitivity elements and a contrastive analysis is conducted to discuss China Image constructed by China Daily(CD)and New York Times(NYT).The news reports on COVID-19 are selected from the websites of CD and NYT with COVID-19/corona-virus/pneumonia and China/Chinese as key words and “2020.1.1-2020.5.31”as data range.39 articles with a total of 37,232 words involving healthcare,international relation,economy,social life and politics are selected.This research will answer three questions:(1)How is transitivity distributed in the COVID-19 news discourse in CD and NYT?(2)How are transitivity elements realized in the COVID-19 news discourse in CD and NYT?(3)What China Images are constructed through transitivity in the COVID-19 news discourse in CD and NYT?Through annotation in UAM.Corpus 3.0,the distribution of transitivity is represented.In term of the distribution,the general distribution of process types in CD are similar to that in NYT with material process being first,relational process second,verbal process third and some other processes.However,in the sector of international relation,verbal process is more than relational process in both CD and NYT.In the political and economic sector,relational process is a little more than material process in CD,but the condition in NYT is not so.In the sector of social life and healthcare,the ratio of material process exceeds that of overall material process.In terms of participants,the goal/scope is more than the actor in CD,but the actor is more than the goal/scope in NYT.NYT prefers to ascribe feature to carrier while CD tends to identify.Drawing the realizations from UAM.Corpus 3.0 and grouping them,it is found that participants in NYT are mainly individuals while participants in CD concern not only individual but also authorities from all works of life.The main participants also differ in different sectors.Processes in NYT are usually negative but processes in CD are positive.Based on the analysis of the realization of transitivity,it is found that NYT has constructed4 China Images.The image of “threat” is constructed mainly through material processes and verbal processes.The “controller of information” is constructed by material processes,relational processes and some cognitive processes together.The image of “one fails to combat the outbreak” is constructed through material processes,relational processes and four kinds of mental processes.The “buyer for global economic depression” is constructed through mainly relational processes and some material processes.However,in CD,China has been constructed as “a friendly partner” who pursuits cooperation around the world through material processes and cognitive processes,“ a country with ancient wisdom and modern creativity”through relational processes and material processes,“a nation with strong solidarity”mainly through the material processes and desiderative processes and “the framed one through relational processes and desiderative processes.By comparing China Image constructed by CD and NYT based on transitivity system,this research elaborates how transitivity serves to the construction of national image,especially in major public health events,warns readers to recognize the hidden ideology in news discourse and contributes to improve media language system.