Study On Discourse Strategies In Russia Today Based On Theoretical Framework Of Discursive Legitimation Strategies

In recent decades,the mainstream official media Russia Today supported by Russian government has emerged as an important medium for conveying Russian voices and has been recognized and accepted by a broad international audience.Thus,Russia Today has attracted extensive researches by scholars in various fields.But at present,there are few linguistic studies on the news reports of Russia Today.This study,drawing on van Leeuwen’s framework of discursive legitimation strategies,is carried out to investigate the use of discursive legitimation and de-legitimation strategies in Russia Today’s news reports by collecting news reports about the Crimean referendum in Russia Today from March 9,2014 to March 30,2014 as the research data.Taking the transitivity system of systemic functional grammar as an analysis tool,the typical linguistic realizations of these strategies are investigated systematically.The results show that the four types of(de)legitimation strategies: authorization,moral evaluation,rationalization and mythopoesis have all been adopted in Russia Today’s news reports on the Crimean referendum.In legitimation(47.2%),authorization(23.6%)is used most frequently,followed by moral evaluation(13.7%)and rationalization(9.4%).In de-legitimation(52.8%),moral evaluation(23.0%)accounts for the highest percentage,with authorization(16.9%)and rationalization(9.5%)following it as the second and the third respectively.Mythopoesis is used the least both in legitimation and de-legitimation strategies,accounting for16.3% and 8.7% respectively.Four(de)legitimation strategies present obvious differences in choosing transitivity processes.Authorization applies verbal process(23.1%)most frequently,followed by material process(12.0%).In(de)moral evaluation and(de)rationalization,material process(16.3%,8.7%)accounts for the largest proportion highest percentage with relational process(7.7%,4.7%)following it.(De)mythopoesis appears in the material process(2.4%)and the verbal process(1.1%)more often.Making specific choices from the language system,Russia Today’s news reporters tend to represent Russia’s actions and the Crimean referendum as warranted by authoritative institutions or persons,corresponding to moral norms,conducive to achieving specific goals,effective and inevitable,in order to legitimize them.On the other hand,by means of characterizing the behaviors of the Kiev and some Western countries as being not recognized by authority,not conforming to ethical norms,or containing improper goals,Russia Today achieves the goal of the de-legitimating actions of Russia’s opponents.This study provides two suggestions for Chinese media and media in general to better construct legitimation discourse.In terms of strategy selection,the media should comprehensively and collaboratively use legitimation and de-legitimation strategies to better realize the legitimacy of their own and the illegitimacy of their opponents;it is suggested that more(de)authorization and(de)moral evaluation strategies should be used to point out the legitimacy of “us” and the illegitimacy of “them”.As for the linguistic realizations,the research results suggest that the media should make full use of material process and verbal process to construct various legitimation and de-legitimation strategies;specifically,in terms of the language selection of each strategy,it is suggested that media should construct(de)legitimation discourse in a forthright manner which is consistent with Western practices since the four types of legitimation and de-legitimation strategies all tends to be direct and explicit in their discourse constructions.Given the analysis results,on the one hand,this study aims to explore the use of discursive legitimation and de-legitimation strategies in Russia Today’s news reports and their typical linguistic realizations to reveal the linguistic features in Russia Today’s prominent discourse communication with the hope of providing Chinese media and media in general some useful suggestions in constructing discourses to convey China’s legitimacy of discourses in possible international hot or controversial issues.On the other hand,this study extends the analysis of discursive legitimation strategies by making a distinction between discursive legitimation and de-legitimation strategies,and provides a relatively new perspective for future researches into the discursive legitimation strategies.