Contrastive Study Of Attitude In Straight News Reports About Disasters Between China Daily And The Washington Post Based On Genre Analysis

Straight news report is universally regarded as the most objective type in journalistic field. It is the timely report on the same day or the second day of the news event. The topic of such report is serious and in principle, the reporter's opinion should not be expressed. In the past two years, many catastrophic events have taken place around the world and they have become the focus of straight news reports for international media.Guided by the theory of Generic Structure Potential and the Attitude System of Appraisal Theory, and with the help of UAM Corpus Tool2.8.17, this paper analyzes the straight news reports about disasters occurring in the past two years both in China Daily and The Washington Post. On the basis of the analysis of Generic Structure Potential and the structural elements, Attitude Resources will be analyzed in order to explore the journalists' opinions and attitude in both newspapers.By studies, it is found that the Generic Structure Potential of the straight news reports about disasters is composed of four obligatory elements including “Headline”,“Lead”, “Consequence Description”(“casualties”) and “Background Introduction”(“circumstances”), and three optional elements including “Dateline”, “Reaction Presentation” and “Journalists' Judgment”. “Consequence Description”, “Background Introduction” and “Reaction Presentation” can be further divided into some subordinate elements. For instance, “Background Introduction” includes“circumstances”, “cultural background” and “similar events”. The applications of the structural elements in both newspapers are by and large similar except the element of“cultural background”, the information amount of which is much larger in the reports of The Washington Post than in China Daily.In addition, both media use more Attitude Resources in the elements of“Journalists' Judgment” and “cultural background” where reporters' attitude is reflected. Very few Attitude Resources are used in other structural elements. Both newspaper reporters prefer to use Appreciation Resources, followed by Judgment Resources with little use of Affect Resources.Generally, all the straight news reports about disasters in the two newspapers are basically objective since both the two sides avoid direct expression of opinions and attitude especially by utilizing Affect Resource in the element of “Journalists' Judgment”. But comparatively speaking, in the elements of “Journalists' Judgment”and “cultural background”, the reporters of The Washington Post use many more Attitude Resources and show more obvious negative attitude. In the element of“Journalists' Judgment”, they comment not only on the disasters, but also on the countries where disasters take place and in “cultural background”, they tend to make use of such optional element to express opinions and attitude no matter whether there is conflict of interest or not between the US and the countries where disasters occur.In a word, straight news report cannot be absolutely objective without any opinion. The reporters have expressed attitude by skillful use of the optional elements“Journalists' Judgment” and “cultural background”, which is particularly notable in The Washington Post. Therefore, the attitude in American The Washington Post is more obvious than Chinese China Daily and the former medium is a little subjective than the latter one.This study not only helps to enhance the readers' critical awareness and cross-cultural capacity in reading English news discourses at home and abroad, but also provides a new perspective for discourse analysis.