| Under the current background of the spread of COVID-19 epidemic around the world,on the one hand,Chinese government has adopted a series of strict prevention and control measures to curb the large-scale spread of the virus scientifically and effectively in China,and gradually restore the production and life of residents to the normal situation,even if there are still sporadic cases at this stage,it is generally within the controllable range.On the other hand,as a responsible power,China not only shares the anti-epidemic experience to the world,but also actively commits to the development and production of Chinese COVID-19 vaccine,and promotes the equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccine,and strives to contribute Chinese strength to the global anti-epidemic action.Chinese COVID-19 vaccine has attracted great attention worldwide,and numerous mainstream media from home and abroad have carried out extensive news reports on it.This research focuses on the attitude resources adopted in the news reports on Chinese COVID-19 vaccine in China Daily and The New York Times in the past year since the approval of Chinese COVID-19 vaccine,and compares and analyzes the attitude resources employed in the news reports,and explores the similarities and differences in the characteristics of the distributions,in order to comprehend the attitudes of mainstream media in China and the United States towards Chinese COVID-19 vaccine,and urge readers to have a more comprehensive understanding of the attitudes held by mainstream media in China and the United States towards Chinese COVID-19 vaccine.This study takes the attitude system in appraisal theory proposed by Martin and White(2005)as the theoretical framework,and selects a total of 78 news reports from China Daily and The New York Times.Two small-scale corpora are established with a total of 53,807 words,namely Chinese News Corpus(abbreviated as CNC)and American News Corpus(abbreviated as ANC),and with the help of two research tools,including Microsoft Word 2019 and UAM Corpus Tool 3.3,the general distribution of attitude resources and the distributions of its three subsystems,including affect,judgement,and appreciation resources.According to the research findings,the attitude resources are widely used in both two corpora.In general,the affect resources used in two corpora account for the lowest proportion of the three subsystems.Chinese mainstream media use more appreciation resources to show the safety,effectiveness and social value of Chinese COVID-19 vaccine,while American mainstream media use more judgement resources to demonstrate their doubts about the capacities of Chinese government to promote the equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines and the reliability of Chinese COVID-19 vaccine.Chinese media hold a positive attitude towards Chinese COVID-19 vaccine,while American media hold a negative attitude.In terms of the three subsystems of attitude system,for affect resources,the un/happiness resources are the least employed resources in both two corpora.More dis/inclination resources adopted in CNC,while American mainstream media employed more in/security resources.For judgement resources,in CNC,the capacity resources account for the highest proportion,while the propriety resources take up the highest proportion in ANC.For appreciation resources,the social-valuation resources take up the highest proportion in both two corpora,but the two countries have different concerns.The reasons for the similarities and differences of distributions in CNC and ANC are explained from the perspectives of social background and cultural values.This study has a certain promotion effect on improving readers’ understandings and insights in interpreting news reports,and to a certain extent,has a positive effect on enriching the researches of applying appraisal theory to study news discourses.In addition,this study also helps readers to improve their critical awareness in news understandings and to interpret news discourses more objectively. |
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