Study On The Subjectivity Of The CNN China-related Reports

The materials for the study are 143 CNN (Cable News Network) China-related reports in the year 2012. They are classified into four fields: politics, economy, culture and society. The subjective orientations are classified into three categories: positive, neutral and negative orientations. There are five types of discourse identifiers: deixis, adjectives/adverbs, notional verbs, modal verbs as well as rhetorics. The study suggests that the commitment of news participants: senders and receivers contribute to the pragmatic subjectivity in the CNN China-related reports; the skillful choosing of words and news sources accounts for the semantic subjectivity in the reports. The strategies of subjectivity are focusing on negative reports, sensationalism in wording and utilization of modalization. The motivations for the subjective reports lie in the potential threat from China's rising to America in the eyes of Americans who are intended to weaken the positive image of China to strengthen its international status, the cultural bias of Americans against China because of the differences between American culture and Chinese culture such as social system, economic model and world values as well as the cultural imperialism of America throughout the world realized by taking advantage of the dominate media such as CNN. The media at home, in the process of external publicity, should pay attention to the construction of the psychological culture of the target readers, making full use of the cultural infiltration through language and extensively reporting a certain issue or a certain type of issue to break through the psychological fortress of the target receivers, thus further intensifying the soft power of China.