A Comparative Study On The Regional Image Of Jiangsu Between Chinese And British Media From The Perspective Of Critical Discourse Analysis

With the advent of multimedia age,digital newspapers have increasingly become an important way to spread social culture and enhance regional comprehensive competitiveness.The media has a strong relationship with the public’s identification and evaluation of Jiangsu image.This study is designed to explore these questions:(1)at the macro level,what are the semantic macrostructures in terms of topics,themes and social actors in Chinese and British media;(2)at the micro level,what are the stylistic features of news texts concerning modality and evaluation,and the influence of the stylistic features on identification meaning or the construction of Jiangsu image;and(3)what are the similarities and differences in the semantic macrostructures and stylistic features of Jiangsu coverage in Chinese and British media.Based on the critical discourse analysis research model,the study conducts a contrastive analysis of the Chinese and British mainstream media reports on Jiangsu from 2013 to 2020 via the qualitative and quantitative methods.A stratified sample of433 news are obtained from Chinese media(China Daily E-paper and China.org.cn),and 409 news reports from British media(the Now Corpus),which are then built as Chinese Media Report on Jiangsu Corpus(230117 tokens and 23732 types)and British Media Report on Jiangsu Corpus(358330 tokens and 27554 types)respectively.The two corpora cover the same news genre and subject matters,and the news discourse features are analyzed proportionally to realize the reliability of the data.With the help of the programming language Python and the corpus analysis tool Lancs Box6.0,the study combines corpus technology with CDA to explore the semantic macrostructure characteristics and stylistic features of news discourse in the two corpora.From an interdisciplinary perspective,it aims to reveal the ideology hidden in different reporting priorities,as well as the influence of the collusion and mutual construction of news discourse and power structure on Jiangsu image.The findings are as follows:At the macro level,the study first uses the Python and Lancs Box6.0 to conduct theme classification in economic,political,social,environmental and comprehensive news reports,and co-occurrence network analysis of high-frequency words.It is found that Chinese media present a multi-dimensional and comprehensive picture of Jiangsu’s economic and social landscape,portraying Jiangsu as a positive image of sound economic development,government legalization,agricultural modernization,social modernization and ecological green development.In contrast,British media coverage of Jiangsu’s social development is unilateral and one-sided,with a highly uneven focus on five themes,depicting Jiangsu as a negative image with a disordered market economy,lack of human rights protection,frequent natural and man-made disasters,and severe environmental pollution.In addition,the composition of social actors shows that social actors are intimately associated with themes,and participants’ discourses reflect various ideologies.Specifically,male and authoritative social actors have more discourse power than female and authoritative social actors.However,the British media perceive Jiangsu as the oriental “other” with ideology from the perspective of orientalism.And the discursive references to social actors are selective,biased and oriental ideology,alluding to Jiangsu as an inconsistent and negative image with the West in terms of market economy,human rights situation,social life,environment,etc.While Chinese media’s discursive references to social actors are characterized with diversification and rationalization,projecting Jiangsu as an image of promoting the “Belt and Road”initiative,building the legal government,developing modern agriculture,protecting the ecological environment and constructing modern society.At the micro level,this study adopts the CDA research modal to identify the stylistic features in terms of modality and evaluation in two corpora so as to reveal the“identification meaning” of Jiangsu image constructed by the features.It is found that the median-value modal words are most frequently used in the two corpora,and the proportions of high and low-value modal verbs in British Media Report on Jiangsu Corpus are higher than that in Chinese Media Report on Jiangsu Corpus.British media are more inclined to construct the identification meaning of Jiangsu image with the stylistic features of high-value modality and high-scale evaluation,and news discourse texts that are originally intended to exchange knowledge for audiences attached excessive subjective attitudes and identities.At the same time,the British media distances itself from China through its international stance,portraying Jiangsu as the oriental “other” and thus highlighting the superiority of Western values and market economy.In contrast,Chinese media reasonably use modal verbs and evaluations for authoritative documents and ordinary event reports,effectively avoiding excessive subjective prediction and intensity evaluation,and establishing an objective and comprehensive judgment on the meaning and value of Jiangsu’s identity.In short,the different focuses and language strategies of the Chinese and British media result in diametrically opposed images of Jiangsu,reflecting the interconnectedness of discourse,power and ideology.In summary,the study provides a new perspective of research on Jiangsu image and Chinese and British mainstream media.By revealing the negative reports and orientalism of British media coverage,the Chinese media can adjust the contents and methods of reporting to build a positive international image of Jiangsu.