Research On National Image Construction From The Perspective Of CDA Analysis

Under the background of fierce competition among the nations in the world,the concept of national image has attracted widespread attention.All nations have elevated the development of national image to the level of a national strategy.National image is the comprehensive perception of a country’s history,politics,economy,culture,lifestyle,and values in people’s minds at home and abroad.It falls under the category of national cultural soft power.Only some studies on national image construction at home and abroad combine CDA with national image and examine national image construction from a discourse perspective.Most studies on national image construction at home and abroad concentrate on communication,international relations,and diplomacy.This thesis adopts the CDA as the theoretical framework.It takes the report on the Centenary of Communist Party of China in the English edition of the People’s Daily as a corpus.It also adopts documentation,quantitative and qualitative analysis methods to study the means of constructing the national image and what kind of national image is constructed.Fairclough believes that Discourse Analysis reveals the implicit relationship between language,power,and ideology.He divides it into three dimensions:description of the text,interpretation of the relationship between text and communication,and explanation of the relationship between communication and social context.First,in the description level,by analyzing vocabulary,transitivity,inflection,and choice of mood,ideological and political positions can be conveyed to readers.Second,by using methods of news sources and reporting mode from the aspect of interpretation,we analyze the authenticity and objectivity of news and the media’s attitude.Finally,the historical,political,and economic factors in the level of explanation are used to·understand the ideology behind the construction of China’s image to provide a reference for other news media to shape a good image of China.The study has found that Discourse Analysis can reveal the underlying ideology behind the news reports.Reports of the People’s Daily construct a positive national image.It constructs the national image under its ideology from the macro and micro discourse levels based on the news corpus.First,at the description level,through the use of high-frequency words such as "people"and“development,”the national image of the CPC respects the subjectivity of the people is constructed.In the transitivity system,the proportion of material processes in both the title and body of the corpus are the largest,respectively,at 81%and 77.1%.The reporters use material processes to manipulate the readers’ conceptual meaning and shape the national image of China as a country firmly following the road of socialism with Chinese characteristics.In the use of modal verbs,the speaker’s confidence,responsibility,and ability in the content of the proposition are expressed through the high use of the word "will" with different modal meanings and the high use of the medium-and low-value modal verbs,creating an image of China as a responsible power that is brave enough to face challenges.The passive voice is used 178 times to emphasize the components of the discourse,drawing the reader’s attention and expressing the author’s attitude,creating an image of the Communist Party of China as a country with strong leadership and high cohesion.Second,at the level of interpretation,55 messages in the corpus originate from China,accounting for 63.95%,and 61 messages from domestic and foreign officials,accounting for 70.93%.In the corpus,there are 69 specific sources,accounting for 92%,and 64 direct quotations,accounting for 65.98%.Direct quotes in news reports come from the people involved,insiders,or authorities.These statistics reflect the truthfulness and objectivity of the news and build a responsible image of a great power recognized by other countries.Finally,at the explanation level,the keyword analysis of the discourse on historical,political,and economic elements in the corpus reveals that the ideology behind the mainstream medium is consistent with the ideology to which China belongs.This thesis combines the linguistics and corpus of news in the research.Meanwhile,corpus analysis tools AntConc3.5.7 and UAM Corpus Tool 6 were used for analysis,which allowed for a more thorough and unbiased examination of the idealology under the national image and provided fresh insights into the national image construction research in the field of linguistics.