A Contrastive Study Of British And American News Reports On China's Belt And Road Initiative From The Perspective Of CDA

In 2013,when Mr.Xi Jinping visited Central Asian and Southeast Asian countries,he put forward a major initiative to jointly build the "Silk Road Economic Belt” and "21st Century Maritime Silk Road ",which was referred to as "the Belt and Road Initiative(BRI)".As China's top-level strategy at the moment,BRI has a significant influence on the economic development for China and other countries along the route.Since its announcement,it has aroused a lively discussion in the world.The United Kingdom and the United States,as powerful countries in the world today,have also attached great importance to BRI.At the same time,in recent years,BRI has also attracted considerable attention of many scholars.However,domestic researches on the BRI focus on the direction of economics and geography,but the study from the perspective of linguistics is relatively rare.This thesis will collect 100 reports on BRI from the mainstream media of the UK and the US(50 are from the UK,and the rest 50 are from the US)to build two small corpora to make a contrastive analysis from the perspective of critical discourse analysis.Based on the Three-dimensional Model of Fairclough,this thesis will try to reveal the similarities and differences of discursive features between British and American media,and try to answer the following three questions:(1)what are the similarities and differences between American and British corpora in terms of classification(high-frequency words and concordance lines),transitivity,and modality at the description stage?(2)What are the similarities or differences between American and British corpora in terms of intertextuality(news source and reporting mode)at the interpretation stage?(3)What factors lead to the differences in American and British corpora from the perspective of institutional context and socio-cultural context?The findings show that:(1)At the first stage: Description of the linguistic features of British and American news reports.High frequency words and concordance lines show that British media attach great importance to economic events related to BRI,instead,American media pay more attention to political events related to BRI,especially geopolitical events.Material process,mental process and relational process are mostly used by both British and American media.Besides,modal verbs of median value are mostly used by both British and American media to keep the objectivity of news reports,but the analysis also shows that the frequency of modal verbs of high and low value used by American media is slightly higher than British media respectively.Mostly,they are used to give negative and improper reports on the BRI by American media.(2)At the second stage: Interpretation of discursive practice through intertextuality.Both British and American media prefer to use specific news sources to verify that their reports are trustworthy and authentic.However,through comparative analysis,it is found that semi-specific and unidentified sources used by American media are more than British media.At the same time,direct discourse(DD)and indirect discourse(ID)are mostly used by both British and American media.(3)At the third stage: Explanation for discursive differences.After studying,the author finds that the reason why British media give more positive and objective reports on the BRI,especially economic events related to BRI,is that Brexit caused a lot of negative effects on Britain.After the Brexit,all most all aspects of Britain are affected by this behavior.Britain currently faces many difficulties and needs to find new and powerful trading partners to solve domestic problems.At the same time,as a traditional economic power,Britain's banking and financial industries rank the top all over the world.British banking and financial companies were attracted by the business opportunities provided by BRI.On the other hand,reports on BRI in American media are mostly geopolitical topics,and there is an intention to distort and slander the BRI in their reports.The study finds that since BRI's projects involve many countries across Southeast Asia,Central Asia and Western Asia,the United States has long had many interests in these areas.The implementation of BRI might touch the interests of the United States in these areas.Therefore,the United States maintains a negative attitude towards BRI to safeguard its own interests.This thesis tries to reveal ideological and social reasons hidden behind British and American news reports,which lead to differences of their attitude to BRI.Therefore,it can provide some reference information for Chinese government to implement BRI better.At the same time,this thesis can also provide a new perspective for BRI's researches.What's more,this thesis tries to remind readers to establish critical thinking during their reading,so that they can keep their objectivity and not be influenced by misleading news reports easily.