A Corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis Of News Reports On Xiaomi From British Media

Fairclough’s three-dimensional critical discourse analysis aims to reveal the relationship between discourse,rights,and ideology by analyzing the linguistic characteristics of the discourse and the social context in which the discourse is generated.News discourse has always been the main research object of critical discourse analysis,and news reports play an important role in shaping people’s ideology.In recent years,with the further advancement of the reform and opening up policy,more Chinese companies have expanded their business to the British market.Therefore,British media reports on Chinese companies are increasing accordingly.The news reports from British media have the potential to affect overseas readers’ perceptions of the image of Chinese companies.However,in the previous corpus-based critical discourse research,relatively little attention has been paid to the research on news reports of Chinese multinational companies by overseas media.This research is based on Fairclough’s three-dimensional critical discourse analysis,and selects Xiaomi’s news samples from BBC,The Guardian,and Daily Mail from 2017 to 2021 as the research corpus,and builds a corpus of British media reports on Xiaomi.It analyzes news discourse from three dimensions: description,interpretation,and explanation,with a view to revealing the ideology implied by the British media’s news reports on Xiaomi.A number of research findings arose from this study.First,the linguistic features of texts were mainly reflected in transitivity,lexical classification,and modality.From the perspective of transitivity,it was found that British media tended to use material,relational,and verbal processes.From the perspective of lexical classification,it was found that the most frequently used vocabulary in British media concerned information about Xiaomi itself or information about mobile phone manufacturers at home and abroad.From the perspective of modality,it was found that British media used more neutral and objective median value modal verbs and less high value modal verbs.Second,the analysis of intertextuality mainly focused on news sources and reporting modes.From the perspective of news sources,it was found that British media tended to choose information from specific news sources.From the perspective of reporting modes,it was found that British media use indirect discourse about twice as much as direct discourse.Third,the analysis of social practice showed that the British media’s construction of Xiaomi’s image was deeply influenced by its political,economic and cultural factors.This research further validates the operability and effectiveness of corpusbased critical discourse analysis applied to news research,and at the same time,through exploring the potential image construction of multinational companies in news reports,it provides some new enlightenment for future research on image construction of multinational companies.