An Inter-culture Journey Across Space And Time

As an American magazine with world prestige, National Geographic is worth exploring both practically and academically, especially in aspect of its commitment to China. The thesis is a multidimensional research on the Chinese subjects reported in National Geographic from 1976-2000, covering examinations of the causes for its success as a journal in general and analyses of its focus of subjects, narratological and linguistic features, and value orientation in reporting Chinese subjects in particular. All the stories in the 300 issues from 1976-2000 are the basic texts for the discussion, whose stories on China are analyzed into three groups (stories on nature; on history and culture; on human life and society) and examined in terms of focus, narratological and linguistic principles, journalistic value, and attitudes toward China. The basic assumption is that the success and popularity of National Geographic as well as the reports of Chinese subject can be approached with cause-effect and structure-function analysis, and the findings of such research are useful not only for better management of a journal but also for the improvement of culture propagation and cross-culture communication. This is a new attempt in culture and English studies: the objectives and approaches alone are found enlightening to the conventional research paradigm and there are some findings which are of practical uses in areas of journalism, culture propagation, English writing, translation.