| At the end of 2019,COVID-19 broke out and developed into a pandemic in a short time,which has been extensively reported by Chinese and foreign media.Faced with the emergency,China,as an explorer and pioneer of epidemic prevention and control,took active measures and timely reported it to WHO.In addition,China transparently informed the public of the epidemic situation and invested strenuous efforts in the research on the virus.However,the Chinese media and the foreign media express different voices towards China.Therefore,the current study aims at providing some references for the Chinese media to build China’s national image by conducting a critical discourse analysis of the news reports about COVID-19 in China Daily during the early period and outbreak period of the epidemic.The current study selects 37 news reports on COVID-19 from China Daily between January 23,2020,and February 23,2020,as a sample corpus.With Fairclough’s three-dimensional model as the theoretical framework,Halliday’s systemic functional grammar as the main analysis tool,and with the assistance of LDA model,Ant Conc,and UAM Corpus Tool,this study performs a critical discourse analysis on the sample corpus.This study intends to answer three questions: 1)What are the linguistic features of the selected news reports? 2)What ideology do these reports intend to convey? 3)What is the relationship between the news reports and the extralinguistic factors? In order to answer these questions,this study conducts the critical discourse analysis from the three stages of description,interpretation,and explanation based on Fairclough’s three-dimensional model,and summarizes China’s national image in the selected news reports.The current study finds that at the descriptive stage,the news reports mostly use neutral or positive terms to describe China.At the sentence level,different transitivity processes are used.The three most frequently used processes are material process,verbal process,and relational process,indicating the objectivity and truthfulness of the news reports and the transparent management of China.In the modal system,modal verbs of median value are most frequently employed,followed by modal verbs of low value,whilst those of high value are least used.The news reports try to avoid using strong or absolute modal verbs.In the interpretation phase,this study mainly analyzes news sources,reporting verbs,and reporting modes.In the sample corpus,most of the news sources are from specific sources,while the information mainly comes from the official speakers.The reporting verbs are mostly neutral,and the reporting mode is dominated by indirect speech.These linguistic strategies render the information as objective as possible,and suggest the views of the reporters.In the explanation stage,the reasons for these linguistic characteristics are analyzed in terms of COVID-19,politics,economy,and social culture.Finally,China’s political,economic,and social images in the news reports are summarized.This study conducts critical discourse analysis of COVID-19 reports,enriches the topics of CDA,makes suggestions on the shaping of the national image in China’s external publicity in the future,and increases readers’ awareness to view news reports in a critical manner. |
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