Critical Discourse Analysis Of Mainstream Media News In The Sino-US Trade War

Since April 2018,the Trump administration has resolutely adopted trade protection measures,imposed tariffs on Chinese exports,and officially initiated a trade war.With the sudden COVID-19 sweeping the world,China has become the only country in the world that still maintains positive economic growth under the pressure of the epidemic,while the U.S.economy has experienced a serious decline.The Trump administration has successively imposed various sanctions on China’s Internet giants such as Huawei,Tencent,and Bytedance,which has intensified the trade friction between China and the United States.The escalation of the Sino-US trade war has had a huge impact on the global economy and has increasingly become the focus of media attention in China and the United States.However,the media of the two countries differ greatly in their reporting on the trade war.Based on critical discourse analysis and systemic functional grammar,this thesis uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods to analyze each of the 50 selected mainstream news media reports on the trade war between China and the United States,aiming at revealing the similarities and differences in text,intertextuality,and sociality of the corpus,exploring the relationship between text,discourse practice,and social cultural context and then analyzing the ideological factors hidden behind them.The main research questions of this thesis are as follows:(1)What are the similarities and differences between the two mainstream media corpus in terms of delivery and form?(2)What are the similarities and differences in the intertextuality(news sources and reporting methods)between the mainstream media corpus of the two countries?(3)What are the factors that lead to the different ideologies of mainstream media corpus in the two countries from the perspective of institutional background and social cultural background?Critical discourse analysis(CDA)is one of the important theories of discourse research.It takes news discourse as the main research object.It aims to reveal the inner ideology by combining text analysis with the broader social and cultural environment,and further reveal the relationship between language,power and ideology.Based on Fairclough’s three-dimensional model theory,using Halliday’s systemic functional grammar as an analysis method,with Ant Conc 3.5.8 corpus tool to extract and analyze the data,this research conducted a critical discourse analysis of50 news reports on the Sino-US trade war each selected from the American mainstream media and the Chinese mainstream media.The research starts with three stages of description,interpretation,and explanation to analyze text,intertextuality,and sociality,aiming to revealing the different ideologies of mainstream media in the United States and China,exploring the relationship between text,discourse practice,and social cultural context.In the description stage,this research starts with the text,firstly constructs a corpus of Chinese and American news discourse,and uses corpus analysis tools to derive the frequent word and keyword.Furthermore,a comparative analysis of lexical choice and classification,transitivity,and modal words in Chinese and American media reports are carried out.In the interpretation stage,this research starts with the news sources and reporting modes of the texts in the two corpora to analyze the differences in intertextuality.In the explanatory stage,this research uses the three perspectives of economy,politics,and culture in order to explore the ideology factors behind the text.The significance of this research can be divided into two aspects: theory and application.Theoretical level: First,this study will explore the relationship between news discourse and social ideology,and enrich the research scope of critical discourse analysis.Second,it will have a certain enlightening effect on the study of economic and political news discourse.Third,this will stimulate the combination of corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis to a certain extent,and promote the multidisciplinary research of critical discourse analysis.In terms of application,first,this study selects news reports on the US-China trade war at important moments,which will help readers understand the development trend of the entire trade conflict.Second,this study reveals the reasons for the different ideologies behind the mainstream media of the two superpowers,so that readers can form an objective and comprehensive understanding of the event,rather than fully accept the views of media.Third,this research can help readers better understand China’s image in the world and change the international community’s misunderstanding of China’s policies.