A Cognitive Construal--based Critical Discourse Analysis Of News Reports On COP21

Based on the theory of cognitive construal,this study analyzes the relevant news reports of the China Daily and The New York Times about the Paris Climate Change Conference(COP21)from the perspective of critical discourse analysis.This study explores the discourse construction of different news media on the same theme or event,and manifests the similarities and differences in language construction and semantic expression between the two media in order to compare and reveal the stance of the news reports.This study puts forward the following three questions according to research purposes:1.What kinds of cognitive construal processes do China Daily and The New York Times use when reporting COP21?2.What are the similarities and differences in the cognitive construal process of relevant news discourse between the China Daily and The New York Times?3.What stances are reflected in news reports by using different cognitive construal processes?This study analyzes COP21 news reports from the perspective of critical discourse analysis from four aspects: schematization,metaphor,profiling and cognitive deixis.According to the analytical results,we found that: From the perspective of schematization: China Daily uses more reciprocal action chain to emphasize the interaction among different agents and the cooperation in dealing with climate change.The New York Times uses more asymmetrical action chain,and America is the agent and other countries are the patients.This indicates America puts itself in the main and prominent position.From the perspective of metaphor: three kinds of metaphors and their sub types are all used in the news reports though the frequency is different.China Daily uses more war metaphor which treats climate change as enemy and opposite to human beings,while The New York Times uses more journey metaphor and sees climate change as a path or journey.During the process there will be a lot of problems and full of uncertainties.From the perspective of profiling,China Daily uses more vocabulary profiling to indicate the determination and courage in this issue.The New York Times uses more sentence pattern profiling to emphasize its policies and some predictions for future development.From the perspective of cognitive deixis,China Daily emphasizes different countries should overcome geographical distance and close the social distance.While The New York Times considered the conference and the targets as the voluntary behavior,so it suspected the feasibility of final targets.This study has applied several construal operations in cognitive linguistics to the critical discourse analysis of COP21 and this study has gained some useful conclusions.Construe climate change conference discourse from a cognitive perspective can enrich critical discourse analysis,the understanding of this kind of news discourse has been expanded and it realizes the application and explanatory function of the theory.