A Pragma-Dialectical Study Of Media Discourse In China-US Trade War

With the globalization of the world economy,the trade disputes between China and the US are becoming increasingly fierce.In 2018,the Sino-US trade war started,which attracted extensive attention and reports from domestic and foreign media.The trade war between China and the US is not only a political,economic,legal and other issue,but also a process of discourse.At present,domestic and foreign scholars pay little attention to the specific process of trade friction in terms of theory,methods and researches,especially the key role of media discourse in the generation,aggravation,transformation and resolution of trade disputes.Based on the research methods of Pragma-Dialectical Theory of Argumentation and Cultural Approach to Discourse,this thesis constructs a new approach to the pragma-dialectical study of media discourse under the framework of Cultural Approach to Discourse.By analyzing the media discourse of China Daily and the New York Times on the Sino-US trade war,this thesis discusses the following two interrelated research questions:(1)from a macro perspective,how does China Daily and the New York Times arrange their discourse behaviors in the trade war?(2)From the micro level,what are the specific discourse argumentation strategies used by the media of China and the US in the trade war? With the help of Cultural Approach to Discourse,this thesis makes a macro analysis and comparison of the collected media discourse materials about Sino-US trade war from the aspects of discourse speaker,discourse theme,discourse historical and cultural relations,etc.Then through the strategic maneuvering of Pragma-Dialectical Theory of Argumentation,this thesis analyzes and compares argumentation structure,and various discourse strategies embedded in the Sino-US trade war reports of China Daily and the New York Times,and tries to analyze the discourse strategies used in Sino-US media's trade war related reports from a micro perspective and the corresponding language form.The results show that,on the macro level,the discourse speakers in China Daily and the New York Times' reports on Sino-US trade war mainly include government departments,state officials,guilds / trade unions,representatives of company,experts and scholars,and ordinary people,and the discourse themes mainly focus on tariff and non-tariff measures.In the New York Times,the main discourses supporting tradewar are government departments,state officials,experts and scholars.The discourse speakers in China Daily are all against the trade war.China Daily has frequently quoted the discourses of government departments,state officials,experts and scholars to express China's position and respond to the relevant reports of the New York Times.What's more,China Daily cited the discourse of several American guild organizations against the trade war.Compared with the New York Times,China Daily uses more factual arguments in the discourse themes setting of Sino-US trade war.At the micro level,there are four argumentation stages in China Daily and the New York Times' reports on Sino-US trade war: the confirmation of the difference opinion in the confrontation stage,the choice of starting points in the opening stage,the choice of arguments in the argumentation stage and the determination of argumentation results in the concluding stage.The four stages of “strategic maneuvering” are comprehensively reflected in “topical potential”,“audience demand” and “presentational devices”.From the three aspects,the rhetorical means are used flexibly to make the arguments have “reasonableness” and “effectiveness”.While the difference is that the “strategic maneuvering” of China Daily's media discourse on Sino-US trade war is mainly embodied in contrast,appeal to authority,concession,statistics,truism,categorization,irony,appeal to opponent's concession,parallelism and presupposition and other rhetorical strategies;the “strategic maneuvering” of the New York Times' media discourse on Sino-US trade war is mainly shown in appeal to authority,nominatum,contrast,metaphor,concession,repetition,vagueness,negative others,presupposition,generalization and so on.The differences of these discourse rhetorical strategies are due to the different audiences of China Daily and the New York Times and the cultural differences in the way of discourse expression.Combined with the case analysis,this thesis summarizes the characteristics of the discourse strategies of China Daily and the New York Times about the Sino-US trade war,and puts forward suggestions to optimize the discourse of trade friction media,which brings implication to the construction of China's media discourse,and provides case analysis for the multi-perspective and interdisciplinary research and development of trade friction media discourse.