Ecological Discourse Analysis Of Domestic Mainstream Media’s COVID-19 Reports

The number,scale and impact of the public opinion events triggered by the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in early 2020 far exceeded those in any previous public health emergency,and have had a huge impact on the stability of the international community.The importance of language as a fundamental factor in public opinion communication is self-evident.International COVID-19 reports released by the mainstream media play a vital role in building a sound international ecosystem of public opinion and maintaining the stability of the social environment.From the perspective of ecolinguistics,this thesis constructs an analytical framework for ecological discourse analysis,based on the ecosophy of “harmony with diversity and interaction in symbiosis” and guided by the transitivity system theory.The corpus of this research is selected from news reports of China Daily.With the COVID-19 as the keyword,thirty epidemic-related reports are selected from China Daily website,including ten reports each from 2020,2021,and 2022,according to their relevance from high to low.The research adopts a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods,mainly qualitative research,supplemented by data.There are both text-based research and data-based empirical research.Generally speaking,it is still a text-based theoretical research.The study analyzes the transitivity characteristics of news discourse,annotating transitivity processes,participant roles and circumstantial roles in the report,and then focus on judging the ecological orientation of its discourse based on specific semantic analysis.On the grounds of the discourse practice of the epidemic reports,finally,the strategy of emergency discourse construction is summarized from the perspective of ecological discourse analysis.This study finds that in the COVID-19 reports of China Daily,action processes account for about 57% of the total,while relation processes rank second but with a yearly declining proportion,and mentality processes have the smallest proportion but show an annually increasing trend.The proportion of ambivalent discourse is about67%,with a decreasing trend overall,while beneficial discourse account for about28%,which is increasing yearly,and destructive discourse has the smallest proportion,with an annual decrease.Finally,based on the above characteristics of the COVID-19 reports,this paper discusses their formation reasons and influences,and summarizes the strategies of emergency discourse construction on the grounds of the reporting discourse.To sum up,in the face of the COVID-19 epidemic,China Daily demonstrates a positive and optimistic attitude,tackles difficulties head-on,and help China establish a reliable and trustworthy image as a great power through the reporting discourse,playing a positive role in promoting the epidemic prevention and control work as well as the sound development of international community.Many of its discourse construction strategies are worthy of further application in future reporting discourse.This study is not only a supplement to the empirical research on ecological discourse analysis,but also a supplement to the research on the reports of public health emergencies under the new perspective of ecological discourse analysis.It is hoped that this study can further improve the language service capabilities of mainstream media for emergency response and contribute positively to maintaining the overall ecological stability of the international community.