| The "Belt and Road Initiative" in China is a cooperation between countries which consists of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.The initiative involves a wide range of countries and is of great significance.Since its foundation,it has attracted much attention from the international community and become one of the reporting focuses of domestic and foreign media.News discourse is constructed of different ideologies and values,which,to some extent,will influence the audience so as to effect the public cognition and behavior.Countries along the "Belt and Road",whether participating in the initiative or not,may characterize it differently due to their geographical locations and economic positions,which have an impact on the cooperation and communication between countries.Therefore,this study examined the mainstream media of five countries,namely,China,the sponsor of the "Belt and Road initiative",the US,the influential country which hasn't participated the initiative and Russia,Singapore and Australia,the three typical countries along the route.And we also selected the English news reports related to the "Belt and Road" from China Daily.The New York Times,TASS,The Straits Times,and The Australian as the corpus.From the perspective of ecolinguistics,this study combined the theory of news frame analysis and transitivity system,appraisal system and Theme system,to examine ecological orientations of the media in the five countries.We analyzed and compared ecological orientations of the news framework setting and the news discourse expression.Based on this analysis,we summarized the similarities and differences of ecological orientations of the media in the five countries and explained their motivations,in order to provide enlightenment for the Chinese media about the"Belt and Road" ecologically beneficial news framework setting and news discourse expression.The following three questions are addressed:(1)What are the similarities and differences in the "Belt and Road" news framework of the media in China,the US,Russia,Singapore and Australia?(2)What are the similarities and differences in the representations of the "Belt and Road" news discourse of the five media?(3)What are the motivations based on the similarities and differences in the ecological orientation of the "Belt and Road" news discourse in the five media?To answer the above three questions,this study uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis.There are three main aspects of the research finding about the similarities and the differences in ecological orientations both of the news framework and of the news discourse and their motivations caused.In ecological orientations of both the news framework and news discourse,the Chinese and Russian media fall within the ecologically beneficial category,in which the former is stronger than the latter;while the Singaporean media fits into an ecologically ambivalent category.Conversely,both the American and Australian media fall into the ecologically destructive category,however,the former is stronger than the latter with regards to the news framework,but weaker than the latter for discourse.As for the motivations leading to these similarities and differences are mainly manifested in six aspects,namely,the factors of economy,environment,mindset,geopolitics,stages of development and co-opetition.For the economical factor,"Belt and Road" enables different countries,especially developing countries,to share the achievements of economic globalization,which plays an important role in the recovery of the world economy.For the environmental factor,the world is full of variability,and COVID-19 also accelerates the uncertainty of the world."Belt and Road" focuses on the overall situation and constructs a world-class platform and ecology,which has attracted more and more media's attention.For the factor of mindset,other than China's idea of diversification and harmony,the mindset of"binary opposition" is deeply rooted in the westerners.Different countries have different views on China and "Belt and Road",which are thus reflected in news reports.For the geopolitical factor,the complex geographical relations between the countries,such as China and Russia,China,the US and Singapore,the US and Australia,will have impacts on international relations,thus different countries have different attitudes towards "Belt and Road",which are reflected in news reports.For the factor of development stages,the development of the countries also influences the news reports on "Belt and Road".For the factor of co-opetition,it is mainly related in China's "Belt and Road" and the "New Silk Road" of US.Different ideas can lead to cognitive bias which will affect the attitudes towards "Belt and Road" of the two countries' media.These factors are all reflected in ecological orientations of the "Belt and Road" news discourse,which have different communication effects on China and "Belt and Road".The implications include five aspects for the Chinese media who should(1)arrange the setting of the topics accurately;(2)enhance the culture of the topics and elements to tell better Silk Road stories;(3)choose the audience as the starting point,use more comments familiar to the audience and pay attention to the diversification of the information sources;(4)choose group participants that emphasize the cooperation of "Belt and Road";and(5)use more descriptions of mental activities and multilateral relations to establish a peaceful and responsible image of China.The contribution of the present study is manifested in two aspects.First,it has constructed a news discourse framework from the perspective of ecolinguistics.This study examined the applicability of the theoretical framework of ecological discourse analysis proposed by He,Gao and Liu(2021),and found that it could be used in the analysis of different kinds of Genre.This study integrated both news and ecological discourse analyses,which constructs the framework of ecological orientation of news discourse under the guidance of the ecosophy "diversification and harmony,interaction and coexistence".It not only promotes the integration of ecolinguistics and news framework,but also provides a new research direction for news discourse analysis.Second,this study has analyzed and compared the "Belt and Road" news discourse of the media in China,the US,Russia,Singapore and Australia,revealing ecological orientations of the news discourse of the five media and examining the similarities and differences and their motivations.This study contributes to existing research by illuminating the ecologically beneficial "Belt and Road" news discourse of the Chinese media,which is suitable for communication and publicity. |
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