| Current press coverage of older people induces a diversification of the group images,which has been one of the research focuses of sociology and communications.However,very few studies were conducted from the perspective of critical discourse analysis to investigate the identity construction of older people.Therefore,the thesis will make a contrastive analysis of the related news reports from People's Daily and The New York Times on empty-nesters by establishing a comprehensive analytical framework of corpus-based critical discourse analysis.The thesis intends to explore the discursive construction of empty-nesters' collective identities in the two self-built news corpora and reveal some possible factors which influence the identity construction.Various corpus techniques were employed in this study,such as keyword,concordance,collocational network and so forth.In terms of theoretical framework,Discourse-historical Analysis and Socio-cognitive Approach were adopted in the corpus-based analysis,which includes data description and explanations on differences and similarities from social,historical and cultural dimensions.In summary,the analysis reveals that(1)nomination strategy,predication strategy and intensification strategy are adopted in the discursive construction of empty-nesters in the two corpora.(2)In the Chinese corpus,empty-nesters are regarded as “a social problem” and “a vulnerable group” who need public concern and care while nominated as “a patient” in the American corpus,because empty nest is just a natural stage of family life cycle in the eyes of Americans.Similarly,they are stereotyped as an infirm,weak and lonely group in both corpora.(3)It is found that different pension systems,family values,intergenerational relationships and social cognition contribute to their identity construction in the newspapers.It is hoped that the study can serve as a spur to the related discursive analysis of empty-nesters and help to understand them better. |
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