| In recent years,the world has faced more and more environmental problems and the media of different countries have frequently reported such problems in their own country.Meanwhile,in the field of academic research,ecolinguistics,which aims to arouse people’s awareness of ecological protection by the study of language,has also vigorously developed.Among the research scholars of ecolinguistics,Arran Stibbe is more influential for his outstanding viewpoint.Underpinned by Stibbe’s theory for ecolinguistics,especially his thoughts of salience and erasure,this thesis compares and analyzes the news reports from Chinese and American mainstream newspapers China Daily(CD)and The New York Times(NYT)about the environmental problems for their respective countries with the purpose of finding out how the two sides tell their own environmental stories by news reporting.Based on the statistics and analysis of the thirty selected environmental news reports,this paper has obtained the following major findings:According to Stibbe,the salience features can be mainly reflected by three aspects: ideational meaning,engagement of voices and the news photos.(1)For the expression of ideational meaning,CD emphasizes the predicted consequences and the influenced areas while NYT stresses the environmental facts and the affected individuals.(2)As for the engagement of voices,CD chooses more semi-specified sources and indirect speech with more voices from “environmental officials”,“experts or researchers” and “media” while NYT uses more specified sources and direct speech with more voices from “government authorities” and “individuals or residents”besides “experts or researchers” and “environmental officials”.(3)According to the numbers and meaning representation of news photos,it can be found that CD stresses more about the environmental phenomena,the influences and the relevant measures while NYT emphasizes the environmental problems and the relevant causes.The erasure features are mainly reflected by two aspects: passive voice and information presentation.(1)In the use of passive voice,CD erases more about the authorities that should take responsibility for the environmental problem by omitting the actor.On the contrary,although NYT also uses passive sentences,most of the causes of the environmental problem and the government authorities are not really erased because they are usually embodied in some prepositions or adverbs of thesentence.(2)In terms of information presentation,CD provides less about the backgrounds & reasons of the environmental problem while NYT mainly erases the practical measures.Based on the above findings,the author of this thesis tentatively draws out two reporting models for the environmental reports in the two newspapers,which are presented with the inverted pyramid structure in journalistic writing.Finally,following Stibbe’s ecolinguistics and his ecological view,this paper holds that in order to solve the problem and protect the environment,journalists should not only describe the environmental problem and its influence,but should also provide the information about relevant departments in charge,the deep-rooted causes of the problem and the related solutions.From this perspective,it can be seen that both sides have merits and demerits in the environmental reporting.Maybe what we can learn from American reports is their specification of information sources,concern for individuals,exploration of reasons and investigation of responsibilities.With these research results,it is hoped that the present study could help readers have a deep understanding of the features of the environmental news reporting between China and America,and could also provide instructive enlightenment for our own news writing and at the same time further enhance the public’s consciousness of environmental protection. |
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