| Since China put forward the initiative of founding Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank(AIIB)in October 2013,the initiative has drawn extensive attention from home and abroad.The establishment of AIIB is of great strategic significance to the infrastructure construction in Asian area and regional economic integration.Thus,both Chinese media and British media have reported quite a lot on this event.Fowler(1991)points out that news is not a ‘value-free reflection of facts.' This thesis combines Corpus Linguistics analytical techniques such as frequency,keyword,concordance and collocation with Critical Discourse Analysis theories such as the Fairclough's dialectical,constructive view of discourse and the Three-dimension framework to investigate the way in which China Daily and Financial Times construct the discourse of AIIB as well as their similarities and differences.This thesis carries out Critical Discourse Analysis on the news report about AIIB from two levels: Text analysis and Social practice analysis.Text analysis mainly employs Corpus Linguistics analytical techniques to examine the similarities and differences on lexical choice made by Chinese media and British media in news reports about AIIB.Social practice analysis mainly reveals the political,economic,and political reasons why similarities and difference occur in the way in which two newspapers construct the discourse of AIIB.In sum,the analysis reveals that:(1)both two media pay close attention to the response of the US towards the establishment of AIIB,and they both particularly describe that the US had urged its allies to refuse to join AIIB as well as that the Congress of the US had frequently resisted to approve the reforms on the quota and government in IMF,implying an attitude of disagreement to above behaviors.In addition,both two media draw upon a great deal of direct speeches and indirect speeches to express their opinions implicitly and to enhance the objectivity of reports.(2)The reports in China Daily mainly elaborate the role AIIB will play in the future and its operational philosophies,including focusing on regional and multilateral cooperation,promoting sustainable development of economy,improving internal operational mechanism,protecting the social and ecological environment in target investment countries,firmly opposing corruption and undertaking international responsibilities positively.The media also stresses that AIIB will be a supplement to other world financial institutions instead of being a substitution to them.Generally,the media constructs a confident and positive image of AIIB.(3)The reports in Financial Times mainly stresses the goal and influence of AIIB.British media holds that the establishment of AIIB is to compete with the US-led World Bank and Japan-led Asian Development Bank and to challenge the leadership of the US in world financial order.The media also thinks that AIIB is the instrument of China to increase its political and diplomatic influence in Asian-pacific region.Besides,by means of portraying that Britain actively pushes the establishment of offshore RMB trading center in London and that the US condemns Britain's constant accommodation to China,the media insinuates the influence of the rising national power of China on Britain.This thesis draws upon the reports about AIIB that have not been researched systematically by scholars as research object,which is an innovation in the selection of language materials.This thesis also testifies the potential of applying corpus-based approach into critical discourse analysis and finally enrich the fruit of this research field.In addition,by means of comparative study of the similarities and differences about the way in which two media construct the discourse of AIIB,this thesis can help readers know how reporters use lexical choice to construct social reality when reading newspapers and help them increase their sensitiveness to media discourse. |
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