A Comparative Study Of The Value Orientation Of Political Newseditorials In China Daily And The New York Times

The discussion on value orientation of political news editorials is not a topic rarely seen in related academic field, and comparative studies on the differences and similarities in value orientation of different news media are also widely carried out. Among the numerous studies on this topic, few have employed the concepts of token and value as well as their configurations in Functional Grammar developed by Halliday to explore the differences and similarities between the value orientations of two news media.This study is an attempt to integrate Token-Value configurations with value orientation in order to map out the differences and similarities in value orientation of political editorials in China Daily and The New York Times. Randomly selecting an equal number of four news editorials from both China Daily and The New York Times, it calculates the statistics of the distribution of Token-Value configuration and Value-Token configuration in all the editorials selected from both newspapers.Based on the analysis of the statistics, the author of this paper then comes to the conclusion that the distribution pattern of Token-Value configuration can reflect the differences and similarities in value orientation in political news editorials in China Daily and The New York Times. The study shows that the writers of Chinese political editorials tend to employ a different news value orientation from their American counterpart.From the Token-Value configuration to news value orientation, this quantitative and qualitative study of the two newspapers is an analyzing process, from specific to general. Token-Value configuration explains how news formed from linguistic perspective.Thus different news value orientations produce different news style by choosing different Token-Value configurations. The emphasis is given to news value orientations as well as its differences so as to analyze the differences of Token-Value configurations from a broader view.This paper falls into six parts:Chapter One first examines the previous studies done on this aspect and finds the motivation for the data-based comparison. Chapter Two provides a theoretical basis of this very paper which includes a brief introduction to relational process, Token and Value configuration as well as its basic principles. As one of the main parts of this paper, Chapter Three carries out an elaborate analysis of Token-Value and Value-Token configurations of four articles from China Daily, with statistics shown in tables and bar charts. Similarly, Chapter Four conducts the same study of Token-Value and Value-Token configurations of articles from The New York Times. The purpose of Chapter Five is to explore the differences and similarities of value orientation in political editorials of the two different newspapers from the perspective of Token-Value and Value-Token configuration on the basis of the findings and statistics. Chapter Six serves as the concluding part which gives a summary of the main ideas in this paper based on the former analysis and comparison. It also explores the possible reasons for the similarities and differences in value orientation of both newspapers. The implications and limitations as well as possible future research directions are also included in this part.