A Contrastive Study Of Sino-American Anti-Cancer Medicine Promotion Discourses

The World Health Organization lists cancer as one of the most deadly threats to human health.This thesis centers in the promotion of anti-cancer medicines from the perspective of discourse analysis and cognitive linguistics.The author employs quantitative and qualitative approaches to conduct a cognitive contrastive analysis of Sino-American anti-cancer medicine promotion discourses,delving into the cognitive mechanism and cross cultural implication concerning anti-cancer medicines therein.The data examined in the research contains sixty pieces of news obtained from websites of influential Chinese and American pharmaceutic companies.Through Current Discourse Space(CDS)analysis(Langacker,2001),the cognitive activation of the discourse is revealed,which unwinds the mental representation of the discourse in forms of discourse frames.By means of Event-domain Cognitive Model(ECM)analysis(Wang,2006),the author then identifies the conceptual metonymy in the text and examines how metonymies and corresponding cognitive models are represented and interpreted in human minds.Together,they sketch out the mechanism of cognitive perception of the text,which influences the promotion of anti-cancer medicines.The author finds that: discoursally,different activating patterns and mental representations produce different impressions of the promoted medicine in readers' mind;semantically,different metonymy types and corresponding cognitive models employed in texts make prominent and comprehensible medicine-related information to most readers,adding up the credibility of the text.Cognitive mechanisms in English and Chinese discourses not only cater to the value,belief and reading need of target readers including patients,medical personnel and business investors,but also exert influence on their perceptions and attitudes toward anti-cancer medicines.