A Contrastive Critical Analysis Of The Construction Of China’s Images In China Daily And New York Times (2010-2016)

In the context of contemporary China’s peaceful rise,as important symbols of China’s comprehensive strengths,China’s national images have become a hot topic in academic circles.National images reflect the overall evaluation by a country itself and by the international community,and the evaluation largely depends on the news reports in mass media.As representatives of the mainstream media in China and the U.S.,China Daily and New York Times play important roles in the process of the construction of China’s images.The thesis is aimed at answering the following three research questions:(1)What are China’s images that are constructed by China Daily? How are these images constructed?(2)What are China’s images that are constructed by New York Times? How are these images constructed?(3)What are the factors that affect the discursive construction of China’s images in China Daily and New York Times?From the perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis,the thesis applies Fairclough’s Three-dimensional Model to the analysis of the data.Fairclough regards language as a social practice and lays emphasis on the analysis of the relationships among text,interaction and social context,that is,to describe the linguistic features of text,to interpret the relationships between text and interaction and to explain the relationships between interaction and social context.6 news reports are selected from China Daily and New York Times as data to analyze the construction of China’s images to reveal the relationships among language,power and ideology in the data.The research finds out that news reports in China Daily mainly portray China as a country which is “friendly”,“mutually beneficial” and “promoting gender equality”,while news reports in New York Times mainly construct China’s images as a country which is “aggressive”,“exploitative” and “having gender inequality”.China Daily tends to construct positive China’s images,while New York Times tends to constructnegative China’s images.The thesis also discusses how political,economic,cultural and social factors influence the construction of China’s images in China Daily and New York Times.The research bears some practical implications.Firstly,it may contribute to English teaching of reading and help students have a better understanding of texts through description,interpretation and explanation.Secondly,it may help to improve people’s critical language awareness to better understand the real intentions of news reporters.Thirdly,it can improve people’s cross-cultural communicative competence.