Discursive Construction Of "New Normal"

Since 2014,“new normal” of China's economy has become a hot topic in both domestic and foreign media,which has attracted the attention of some scholars to research on such a topic from different perspectives.This thesis aims to analyze the news reports about “new normal” of China's economy in China Daily and the New York Times from 2014 to 2017 and then investigate their ways of discursive construction from the perspective of critical discourse analysis.With the assistance of the corpus software Ant Conc,it adopts the corpus analysis method to illustrate the reasons leading to the similarities and differences in their ways of discursive construction from the dimensions of ideology,international relations and news values.The major findings of the thesis can be summarized as follows.Firstly,China Daily conveys the message that “new normal” of China's economy is a positive signal not only to China as it is conducive to the economic structural transformation and sustainable development,but also to the rest of the world in that it can create a number of new development opportunities.Therefore,generally speaking,China Daily constructs the discourse of “new normal” of China's economy in a positive way.Secondly,compared with China Daily,the New York Times seems objective and sometimes even slightly pessimistic towards China's economic “new normal”.Though it emphasizes China's powerful economic position on the world economic stage,China's great contribution to the world economy and affirms China's economic transformation,the New York Times mainly focuses more on the negative side of “new normal” by stating its unpleasant effects on the world economy,such as the turmoil of Chinese stock market caused by China's “new normal” and the adverse influence on the global stock,trade,and investment market.