Debate On The E-bike Standardization: A Discourse Analysis

Applying the theories and methods of discourse analysis, the present thesis investigates the discourses in the social event of implementation of E-bike standardization. The study analyses the official document from Standardization Association of People's Republic of China (SAC for short), the appeal article from Tianjin Bicycle Association and the news report from Xinhua News Agency, by employing Fairclough's Three-dimensional Framework as analytical framework, Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar, intertextuality and pronoun analysis as the analytical tool. Through systematic analysis, it is found that: 1) SAC constitutes its authorized position by using unmarked theme and marked theme, and keeps distance with the public and subordinate bicycle associations. 2) Tianjin Bicycle Association achieves its goals (postponing the new standardization), shows its struggle with SAC and strives for their interests, by using proper processes, and high positive or negative modal operators. 3) The news report from Xinhua News Agency applies so many indirect speeches in order to show their objective position in the social event, but it only quotes versions which we think are significant and important person, for example, experts, CEO or chairman of SAC, which reveals its representative of powerful people and institution. 4) In the three discourses, they use different pronoun to constitute different social identities.