A Contrastive Analysis Of News Discourse From The Perspective Of Cultural Rhetoric

News is the main channel for people to know what has happened or is happening in this world. Usually, we take news as a plain reflection of what has actually taken place in the real world, however, since news takes the duty and responsibility of persuading and convincing the audience, all possible means to modify words are wildly adopted in the production of news, rhetoric is a frequently used one. Rhetoric in news discourse has long been a popular object in linguistic study and news study. Here, the author takes a specific section of news discourse as the research object -- conference reports. Conference reports usually cover those significant events happening in a country in aspects like politics, economy, education and so on. Among all kinds of news, conference news reports serve as the best channel for one to know what’s happening in a country, no matter he is a native or a foreigner. However, few scholars have concentrated on this section and among those studies concerning this topic, most of them are discussing the skills and methods in conference reports producing and editing. Here the author would explore a relatively novel way to study conference reports by analyzing them from the perspective of cultural rhetoric.To conduct such a research, the author has collected news reports on national conferences on Chinese mainstream newspapers including China Daily and People’s daily as well as their American counterparts New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal which have always been taken as the representatives of American mainstream newspapers. The author has adopted quantitative and qualitative approaches in studying these news reports. With quantitative approach, the proportion of artistic rhetoric modes like logos, ethos and pathos used in conference news are counted, so are the modal verbs and personal pronouns. A comparison is made between Chinese and American conference news reports in this aspect. With qualitative approach, rhetorical devices and cultural elements involved in some representative paragraphs abstracted from these conference news reports are analyzed.Through the research, the author found that there do exist some differences between Chinese and American conference news discourse in the usage of artistic rhetoric modes, modal verbs and rhetorical devices. For example, compared with reports, on American newspapers, the reports on Chinese newspapers use more pathos and pronouns like "people" as well as its Chinese version to refer to people as a collectivity in the process of persuasion than those on American newspapers. Also, as for modal verbs, conference reports on Chinese newspapers involve more modal verbs concerning obligation while those on American newspapers involve more concerning likelihood and ability. Meanwhile, there are also some similarities between conference reports on Chinese and American newspapers. Both Chinese and American newspapers favor logos the most among three artistic rhetoric modes, and in terms of rhetoric devices, metaphor and allusion are the most frequently used ones in reports on both sides. Through analysis and study, the author found that the usage of rhetoric in either Chinese conference reports and American ones are closely related to the cultures of these two countries. Specifically, China enjoys a relatively higher power distance culture, thus modal verbs indicating obligation are more favored in reports on Chinese newspapers. Also, in Chinese culture, collectivism is advocated, hence pronouns which are used to refer to people as a collectivity are used more frequently than on American newspapers. On the other hand, the United States enjoys a relatively lower power distance culture, therefore modal verbs indicating likelihood and ability are more frequently used. Meanwhile, people in the United States emphasize individualism, which results in the less frequently use of pronouns concerning collectivity in American conference reports. As for the rhetoric devices favored by both American and Chinese newspapers, most of the rhetoric materials involved are related to the cultures and histories and these two countries. Through the study, the author summarized the differences and similarities on the use of rhetoric in conference reports on Chinese and American mainstream newspapers and made an attempt to find the relation between these phenomena and cultures behind them.The comparison and analysis of conference news reports on Chinese mainstream newspapers and American ones from the perspective of cultural rhetoric may help to enhance the efficiency of Chinese conference news on persuading the audience and reaching the goal of news communication.