| In recent years,the Belt and Road initiative,an important economic and political strategy of China in the new era,has received widespread attention from domestic and western media,and relevant discussion has never ceased.The news reports revolving this initiative have received praises,but there also exist deliberate misunderstandings.Different media may have different attitudes towards the Belt and Road initiative because of the different countries they present and national interests they hold.In relevant news reports,writers often use metadiscourse to build identity or to express their stances,while readers can use metadiscourse to interpret news,understand the writers’ attitude and explore the information behind the texts.This paper adopts the metadiscourse classification proposed by Hyland in 2005,and divides metadiscourse into two categories: interactive metadiscourse and interactional metadiscourse,each of which has five subcategories.This article selected 50 news reports from the Xinhuanet website(English version)and 50 news reports from CNN website revolving around the topic of the Belt and Road initiative,aiming to explore the answers to the following four questions: 1.Are there significant differences in the use of interactive metadiscourse in the Belt and Road initiative news on Xinhuanet and CNN websites? If so,what are the specific differences? 2.Are there significant differences in the use of interactional metadiscourse in the Belt and Road news on Xinhuanet and CNN websites? If so,what are the specific differences? 3.Do the differences in the use of metadiscourse between these two media reflect their different attitudes and stances? 4.What are the reasons behind the differences in the use of metadiscourse between these two media?After quantitative and qualitative analysis of 100 news reports,it is found that there is no significant difference in the interactive metadiscourse but indeed a significant difference in the use of interactional metadiscourse between the news reports on Xinhuanet and CNN.In terms of the interactional metadiscourse(boosters,attitude markers,engagement markers,etc.),the results showed that CNN has used more interactional metadiscourse than Xinhuanet.However,the interactional metadiscourse used by Xinhuanet are much more positive and clearer than those used by CNN,which reveals that Xinhuanet news reporters seems to hold a more positive attitude towards the Belt and Road initiative while CNN’s attitude is more vague.The study also explores the reasons for the differences.After the discussion,it seems that these differences are mainly caused by the differences in contents of the news in two media and that in political stances. |
PDF Full Text Request