A Corpus-driven Study Of China's Human Rights Image In The U.S.Human Rights Reports On China

In recent years,studies on China's images in various fields have enjoyed wide popularity in language study.However,few studies have been conducted to analyze the image of China's human rights.The present study,therefore,aims to figure out the image shaped in the U.S.Human Rights reports on the basis of Extended Unit of Meaning model.By means of a self-constructed corpus,this study generated a list of node words which are obviously overused in the self-constructed corpus in comparison with the Reference Crown corpus.Through analyzing the collocation and colligation features of six node words as well as the semantic prosody of human rights within the EUM model,we draw a conclusion about the image of China's human rights.Collocation analysis of each node word indicates the collocation habits of the node words in the self-constructed corpus.It is found that collocations of node words mostly reflect the actions or measures taken by these behavior agents.And the colligation analysis of each node word shows that the most frequently used structure is SVO structure,corresponding to the collocation habits.As to the semantic prosody analysis of human rights,the semantic prosody types are more diversified in the self-constructed corpus compared with the semantic prosody types in Reference Crown corpus.With sampled concordance lines analysis,it is found that the image of China's human rights in such aspects as official attitudes to international human right reports,governmental actions taken against relevant civil human rights organizations and treatment of extreme cases is quite negative while the efforts made by civil volunteers are greatly appreciated in the U.S.Human Rights reports.It can be concluded that the U.S.Human Rights reports on China have attempted and managed to create a relatively negative image of China's human rights by applying certain semantic prosody of some words.As to research implication,more attention shall be paid to language learners' capacity of critical reading and independent thinking during language learning and teaching.