Study On Critical Discourse Analysis Of British Confucius Institute News Reports

Confucius Institute has attracted extensive attention from overseas media and formed a high-profile field of public opinion with its growing development scale and increasing international repercussions.British mainstream media are entitled to the right of speech and initiative in international communication,for which their news reports on Confucius Institute reflect the value orientation of western society and influence the brand building of Confucius Institute to a large extent.The research corpus consists of 80 Confucius Institute reports,which are selected among 10 British mainstream media during 2004-2022,including Reuters、PA Media、BBC、The Independent、The Guardian、Daily Telegraph、Financial Times、Daily Express 、 Daily Mail and The Economist.Based on the perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis and aimed to serve as a reference for the sustainable development of Confucius Institute,this study explores the overall characteristics of the news,the constructed image of Confucius Institute,the adopted discourse strategies and the contributing factors behind the news.The introduction displays the research background、purpose and significance,presents the research design and methodology,and clarifies the previous research on Confucius Institute from home and abroad.Next,Chapter I makes a horizontal comparison and a vertical comparison in the amount、theme、length and attitude of the80 news reports,which feeds back with the news reports’ overall characteristics.Then,the Three Dimensional Discourse Analysis by Fairclough is adopted in Chapter II to describe the linguistic features from the angles of title formats and conceptual metaphors and investigate the clear intertextuality from the views of reference analysis and default analysis.Further,Chapter III refers to the “Hierarchy of Influence Model” theory to better explain the driving forces behind the news reports,based on which,the feasible suggestions are offered to improve the conditions of public opinion.The study finds that British mainstream media focus a lot on the political influence and controversial issues around Confucius Institute from 2014,leading to the negative attitude playing a dominant role in the news reports hereafter,although the diachronic changes and synchronic differences can be perceived in the news reports attitude through 2004 to 2022.Meanwhile,the British mainstream media mainly employ the discourse strategies such as setting title style,using conceptual metaphor,controlling quotation selection and providing presupposition information to express their following attitudes.On the one hand,the media fully recognize Confucius Institute’s practical value in language teaching and cultural communication.On the other hand,the media,solely according to their culture standards and self-protection awareness,criticize the rationality and compliance of the construction of Confucius Institute and build the stereotype that Confucius Institute is a propaganda tool to expand China’s overseas influence and an intermediary to promote cultural hegemony.The reasons of such a reporting result include but are not limited to the media’s consideration for ideology and the problems of mechanism of Confucius Institute.Therefore,Confucius Institute should enhance external publicity and internal construction to solve the current dilemma of public opinion.