China’s Image Construction In American Mainstream Media Reports On Military Parade On P.R.China’s 70th Founding Anniversary: A Critical Discourse Analysis

As China’s global influence grows,the western countries led by the United States have long been concerned about Chinese issues.As the image of China created by them(the image of “the other”)has exerted an important influence on China’s international interaction,it can help China construct a more positive image in the international community to study the image of China constructed by the mainstream media in western countries.The military parade in China has drawn attention from all over the world and the reports on the 70 th Anniversary of the founding of the P.R.China by the western mainstream media are worth examining.Drawing on Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of discourse and Halliday’s transitivity theory as the analytical frameworks and 12 news reports from The New York Times(NYT),The Washington Post(WP),The Los Angeles Times(LAT)and The New York Daily from September 28,2019 to October 12,2019 as the collected data,this thesis studies the constructed China’s image as “the other” from the perspective of the mainstream media in America.This study makes a critical discourse analysis to answer three questions:(1)What are the distribution characteristics of six processes of transitivity in American mainstream media reports?(2)What images of China are constructed by the transitivity employment in these reports?(3)What are the possible factors underlying the national image constructing in these reports?Through qualitative and quantitative analysis of the collected news reports,this study found that:(1)At the text level,the American mainstream media reports on the70 th anniversary of China’s military parade involving the material process(67.3%),relational process(15.1%),mental process(7.4%)and verbal process(9.4%)and existential process(0.7%).The data show that the above processes mainly occur in Chinese politics,military and economy and the emotional tone are plenty,for example,the political and military topics are generally positive emotions,while the economic topics are generally negative emotions;(2)At the level of discourse practice,through transitivity employment together with intertextual use of different genres of narrative,exposition,commentaries in the news discourse,the American mainstream media mainly construct three images of China as “the other”: “China with impressive military capability”,“China with strong political leadership” and “China with weak economic development”;(3)At the level of social practice,the social development and ideological differences between “the old West” and “the new China” are considered to be the main factors for the construction of the above images.The results show that the image of China constructed by American mainstream media is diversified and complicated with both positive and negative aspects in the context of historical prejudice and reality conflicts.With reference to this,it is suggested that the Chinese voicing organs can take more initiatives to present the real stories of China to the world so as to clear up the misunderstanding caused by the negative voices in western media.