| With the development of China's comprehensive national strength, China has to maintain national interests in a wide range. Chinese military development is mutually reinforcing with China's peaceful development. Though China always sticks to the principle of peaceful development, western countries are extremely anxious and worried about any military operations or movements of China, and some western countries, politicians or scholars tried very hard to pose the image of China threat, regardless of the theory's being ridiculous. Thus, it is urgent for Chinese military today to make her voice heard by the world, enabling the world to have an impression of the real China, and ensuring a good international environment for China. To fulfill the requirement, the Ministry of National Defense of the PRC hosted the first news conference in 2008 and established the regular news conference system in April 2011, which has been a vital platform to give out China's voice and to interact with the outside, but it is a new thing for the Ministry of National Defense of the PRC while the U.S Department of Defense has sufficient experience since it had built the news conference system much earlier. Recently, major military operations have been the hot issues in both countries'news conferences. As cognitive linguistics has a strong power in interpretation and the frame theory has been looming in the study of both news discourse and other political discourse, the current study will adopt the frame theory and make an exploration of the news conferences held by the Ministry of National Defense of the PRC and the U.S. Department of Defense. It is aimed that the current study will help us understand the differences and similarities of how the major military operations on both Chinese and the American sides are framed.With a comprehensive review of relevant literature about news conference and frame theory, the study is based upon a collection and observation of 189 transcripts on the American side, ranging from June, 2010 to May, 2011, and 10 transcripts on the Chinese side, ranging from May, 2008 to May, 2011. Case study was used to survey the typical features of the frames occurring in the news conferences and a comparative method was also adopted for the purpose of exposing the similarities and the differences between the Chinese and American sides. The military exercises are selected as the case to represent major military operations for the current research. The data for case study consist of 22 news conferences related to military exercises in America and 10 news conferences in China. Guided by the frame theory, the analysis is based on three dimensions: event frame, text frame and semantic frame and the major findings are summarized as follows.(1) Event frame: Event frame refers to the major structuralized conceptual elements which are recurrently involved in the understanding of the major military operations. The basic elements of the event frame of major military operation framed by two countries are roughly the same. The basic elements of the news presenting by the presenters are target, participants and purpose. Both countries introduced cause and decision making procedure to prove the justification and legitimacy of the military exercises at the first time.(2) Text frame: The macro frames of the news conference from the China's Ministry of National Department and the U.S. Department of Defense are roughly the same: Presentation—Question and Answer—End. Atmosphere in American's news conferences is casual and relaxing while in China is formal and serious. The relationship between presenters and journalists is asymmetrical, with the power controlled by the presenters, but the American is more invisible: the interactive question-and-answer may contain more than one turn in the news conferences of the U.S., hence the journalists can keep querying until they gain sufficient information or the presenters give a sign to stop. However, there is usually one turn of interaction between the presenters and journalists in the news conferences of the Ministry of National Defense of the PRC.(3) Semantic frame: semantic frame refers to the whole semantic orientation displayed by the discourse towards the military operations, especially the political stance, attitude and ideology of the host country of the military operation. The frame is especially studied by the observation of the crucial words, which were searched and analyzed with the help of Wordsmith. It is found that the crucial words selected by the presenters respectively help to evoke the frame desired or favored by the presenters, and all the crucial words work together to create a general semantic frame which are favorable to the host of the military operation. To be specific, the American side framed the military exercises by the selection of crucial words and expressions, such as the DPRK, ROK, and the U.S., which are further based upon a number of more specific words as sub-frames. They contribute to evoking the justification and legitimacy of the military operation, and promoting the American values and ideology as well. On the side of China, the military exercises are framed as a response to"terrorism, separatism and extremism". On the other hand, the military operation is posed as a routine work, emphasizing the peace, anti-terrorism and cooperation, but the promotion of Chinese political thinking or values or ideology are not very explicit.As an exploration to study how the language concerning major military operations is used in news conferences by the Ministry of National Defense of the PRC and the U.S. Department of Defense, the current study also found that the frame theory is a useful theoretic tool in the interpretation of how the news conference is framed by both the Ministry of National Defense of the PRC and the U.S. Department of Defense.In the end, the thesis makes a discussion of the limitations and further improvement in the future studies. It is hoped the study will throw some new light on the understanding and organizing of news conference by both the Ministry of National Defense of the PRC and the U.S. Department of Defense. |
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