A Contrastive Study On Semantic Prosodies Of NewsKeywords Based On China English Corpora And Native English Corpora

Semantic prosody refers to the consistent aura of meaning with which a form is imbued by its collocates. The researches on semantic prosody show that the collocational behaviour of lexical item presents certain semantic preference:some lexical items may habitually attract the words with the similar semantic feature so as to constitute a collocation. Since the lexical items of the same semantic feature co-occur with the keyword frequently, and the latter will have been "infected" with the related semantic feature, which make the entire context filled with a certain semantic atmosphere. The research of semantic prosody contributes a brand new direction to observe and describe the lexical behaviour. At the same time, it provides a new research direction for corpus linguistics.Since the phenomenon was first discovered by Sinclair in1990s, it has become a new and important object. Increasing attention has been paid to the research by scholars of corpus linguistics.As a variant of Standard English, China English reflects the particular phenomenon in Chinese society and culture. It also has the function of cross-cultural communication. The research on China English is at the preliminary stage. The study on semantic prosody from the perspective of contrasting China English and native English has been seldom presented since now.The present paper attempts to answer the following questions by examining the news reportages of the18th CPC Congress in China English and native English:(1) What are the collocational behaviours of the news keywords in China English and native English?(2) What semantic prosodies of these keywords are presented in China English and native English?(3) What are the similarities and differences in China English and native English concerning the prosodies and collocational behaviors of these key words? And what are the reasons behind the differences and similarities?The current research adopts corpus-based approach. China English News Corpus and Native English News Corpus are built by collecting the texts of news reportages from three weeks before and after the18th Congress. Five words, political, cultural, social, rural and foreign, which coincidently occurred in both of the two corpora, are selected out as the subject of the present study based on the text resources and previous study. The frequency, the collocations and the concordance lines of the five keywords are observed in detail. Based on the semantic fields of collocations, the collocational behaviours and semantic prosodies of news keywords are identified one by one. In the end, Chi-square test is used to contrast the significant differences of semantic prosody of the news keywords. The research results show that the news keywords political, foreign and rural show mixed semantic prosody which have some differences in detail in two corpora. The news keywords cultural and social present positive semantic prosody in China English News Corpus; whereas they present mixed semantic prosody with negative semantic preference in Native English News Corpus.We can conclude from the analyses that, firstly, the semantic prosody of the news keyword is constituted by the semantic preference of collocations instead of the semantic preference of the single word. Under the background of the present society and culture, the semantic prosody of the news keyword tends to be complex. The polarized division as being either positive or negative may be oversimplified. Second, some typical collocations of China English occur in both corpora indicating that China English is being accepted by more and more people. The different collocational behaviours and semantic prosodies in two corpora express the different views, cultures and even ideologies between China and the West. Western media have maintained their prejudice against China while updating the impression of China.Through the contrastive analyses of semantic prosodies of the news keywords in the18th CPC Congress, a brand new perspective may be provided for us to compare the language, culture and ideology between China and the West. Chinese English learners should enhance the awareness of semantic prosody and acquire the knowledge of semantic prosody to ensure the acceptability and readability of news reportages, and avoid pragmatic failure and even communication failure. With a clear idea and sense of urgency, Chinese English learners should improve their communicative ability and language ability to reveal real China to the world.