Discursive Construction Of Malaysia’s National Image: A Comparative Analysis Of Intertextuality In News Reports On MH370

The last two decades have witnessed a great boom in the studies of national phenomena. Among them, national image is widely studied in the fields of mass communications, public relations, international politics, etc. Though attention has been paid to the construction of national image with linguistic methods, the studies both at home and abroad are limited.Drawing on Fairclough’s(1992) intertextuality approach, this paper makes a comparative analysis of news reports on MH370 incident, a threat to Malaysia’s national image, to explore how Manifest Intertextuality and Constitutive Intertextuality are brought together to construct Malaysia’s national image. National image in this thesis means the overall evaluation of a nation’s crisis responses discursively constructed by newspapers. The reports are selected from Malaysia’s New Strait Times(NST) and China’s China Daily(CD).A qualitative examination of the data generates the following findings.First, discourse representation(including reported clauses, reporting verbs and reporting sources) in Manifest Intertextuality and thematic interaction(embodied in serial and single reports) in Constitutive Intertextuality are adopted by NST and CD to construct Malaysia’s national image.With respect to Manifest Intertextuality, the following three conclusions can be drawn.(1) Three image repair strategies represented by reported clauses are found in both newspapers: denial, evasion of responsibility, and reducing offensiveness. NST prefers to use reducing offensiveness strategy, with denial and evasion of responsibility as supporting strategies, whereas CD attaches nearly equal importance to reducing offensiveness and denial, and evasion of responsibility is least adopted.(2) The emotional feelings of reporting verbs represent the negative and positive images of reporting sources. NST employs more positive reporting verbs, whereas CD employs more negative ones.(3) The credibility of reporting sources presupposes the authenticity of the image constructed by strategies summarized above. These two newspapers struggle for credibility in different ways. NST adopts more specific sources than CD, but CD keeps a balance of sources from inside and outside of Malaysia.With respect to Constitutive Intertextuality, we find two conclusions.(1) Themes in serial reports about one issue interact with each other in an “information releasing and reactions receiving” pattern. Malaysia’s image is formed in the diachronic crisis management plot composed of repetitions of such patterns. The thematic progression patterning in NST is coherent whereas in CD is incoherent.(2) Themes of two single reports from NST and CD interact with each other in an “initiation and reply” pattern. The single report from CD is the initiator, and that from NST is the replier. The repetition of these patterns strengthen Malaysia’s image built by Manifest Intertextuality.Second, the diverse strategies used by NST and CD lead to different national images of Malaysia. In NST, Manifest Intertextuality constructs Malaysia as a solidary community who persists in its commitment and honesty to the crisis. Thematic intertextuality in serial reports builds a stable, calm, logical, and quick-responsive image of Malaysia. Thematic intertextuality in single report constructs a persistent and insistent image of Malaysia. In CD, Manifest Intertextuality constructs Malaysia as a divided nation who bears both commitment and irresponsibility. Thematic interaction in serial reports builds a capricious and unstable image of Malaysia; thematic interaction in single report builds an inflexible and torpid Malaysian image.To conclude, NST mainly adopts the strategy of reducing offensiveness, positive reporting verbs, and coherent thematic progression to build a strong, calm, persistent, and responsible image of Malaysia. CD mainly adopts the strategy of denial, negative reporting verbs and desultory thematic progression to build a slow-responsive, quick-change, and irresponsible image of Malaysia.It is hoped that the study will inspire more attention to the discursive construction of national image as a cross-disciplinary subject, and will provide hints and instructions to mass media and political practitioners to adjust their discursive strategies for future image building.