本文是新闻媒体论文，In terms of the thematic choice ofnews reports, the marked Theme shows America’s emphasis on China’s craftypractice, while America is confident in pulling through in the trade dispute. Toconclude, a negative identity of China and a positive identity of America areconstructed in The Washington Post.Second, in the interpretation part, modes of reporting and source of news areanalyzed. The Washington Post uses a large amount of DS and IS related to Americato make its news reports more reliable, convincing and objective when statingAmerica’s opinions and countermeasures. However, the total number of quotationsrelated to China is nearly one fifth of that related to America. Actually, the moreamount of IS in reporting America reveals that The Washington Post is not soobjective. However, readers are more sensitive to the total number of quotations butless sensitive to the proportion of IS and DS, let alone making a careful investigationinto the number of DS and IS used in news reports. When concerning the sources ofquotations, America-related sources are more multiple and of higher quality thanChina-related ones. In China-related sources, more semi-clear sources are intended tohelp get off responsibility when faced with questions about the facticity of the news.In America-related sources, more clear sources are used to convince the readers of theauthority and facticity of the quotation content.Third, the reasons why The Washington Post constructs a negative identity ofChina and a positive identity of America can be explained from the economic andpolitical situations in America.
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Chapter One Introduction
Since the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the UnitedStates in 1979 and the signing of a bilateral trade agreement, the trade between thetwo countries has been developing rapidly, but there are also frequent frictions anddisputes. Especially since the election of President Trump in 2016, the United Stateshas taken a series of actions against China with the reason of its huge trade deficit ingoods. In January, the President Trump administration announced “global safeguardsfor imports of large washing machines and photovoltaic products for four and threeyears, respectively, with tariffs of up to 30 percent and 50 percent”. On August 23, theUnited States imposed a 25% tariff on imports of $16 billion from China under thesection 301 investigation. As a counterattack, China leveled complaints againstAmerica for the 301 investigation to the WTO and imposed a 25% tariff on imports of$16 billion from America. With America’s attack and China’s counterattack, theSino-U.S. trade dispute is increasingly escalating and intensifying. Not only are bothtwo countries trapped, but also other countries are influenced. As one of themainstream newspapers in America, The Washington Post made close reports onSino-U.S. trade dispute. This paper takes Sino-U.S. trade dispute as the topic andselects news reports from The Washington Post as research data and takes CriticalDiscourse Analysis as the theoretical framework together with Systemic-functionalGrammar to explore the identities of China and America constructed in U.S.newspapers.In Chapter Three, Fairclough’sthree-dimensional model and Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar as well as aseries of linguistic aspects that will be discussed to the study of national identities ofChina and America are elaborated in detail. Besides, the research questions are alsoput forth and the procedure of data collection and data criteria are illustrated inChapter Three. Chapter Four is the main body of the current study. Detailed analysisof the selected data and concrete identities and of China and America constructed areembodied with specific examples. And possible reasons for constructing identitiesof China and America are explained. The last chapter, Chapter Five, draws aconclusion of the major findings of the study and points out both the implications andlimitations of the research and suggestions for future research.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Identity construction
According to Longman Dictionary, there are two interpretations of “identity”: (1)someone’s identity is their names or who they are (2) the qualities and attitudes that aperson or group of people have, that make them different from other people. Fromhere, we can conclude that “identity” is a concept about “Who am I” (Jing Xiaoqiang& Jing Xiaojuan, 2010). Here “I” can be an individual or a member of the society.There are two standpoints about identity. Essentialism regards the world as a constantone, identity is preexistent and people can’t change or choose their identity (Shotter,1993). Social constructivism thinks identity is constructed and acquires mutualapproval through social communication. Now social constructivism’s idea aboutidentity is widely accepted and adopted in research. But how to explore identityconstruction? Social constructivism covers many discussions about identityconstruction, one of which is language and identity. Language is not only the tool weuse to know the world, but also the outcome of the world as well as the organiccomponent of social reality. The social relations, social identity and people’scomprehensive about the world can be constructed by language. Discourse, as oneconcrete form of language, also can construct identity (Xiang Yunhua, 2009).Xv Min and Chen Xinren (2015) analyze how English teachers in collegeconstruct pragmatic identities through discourses in class and pragmatic strategiesfrom the perspective of adaptation theory. Research findings reveal that in classroomdiscourse, four pragmatic identities are constructed, namely, knowledgeable teachers,canonical teachers, amiable teachers and peer teachers. Knowledgeable teachers andpeer teachers are constructed by elaborating practice. Canonical teachers areconstructed by directive practice and amiable teachers are constructed by expressiveand directive practice. Various physical, social and mental factors in communicativecontext constrain the construction of these identities．
2.2 Previous studies of news discourse from Critical Discourse
AnalysisKim (2014) incorporates the quantitative and qualitative approaches, namelycorpus-based approach and Critical Discourse Analysis approach to examine U.S.news stories in the mainstream media and tries to specify specific discursive practicesrelating to North Korea. The research reveals that three U.S. media outlets (The NewYork Times, Newsweek and CNN) divide the world into different sets of countries, andthat being pro- or anti-USA may affect which country is in relation to North Korea.Brandi and Chen (2016) examine the interrelationship between media, culture,globalization and social movements through a Critical Discourse Analysis ofinternational news discourses on the U.S.-based Occupy movement(s) and the ArabSpring. With an attempt to pay closer attention to democratic discourses andglobalized social movements, they explore the ways in which news discourses aboutthe Occupy and Arab Spring reinforce dominant ideologies related to culturalimperialism, global capitalism and Eurocentric democracy. They further describedifferences between the ideology of democracy and the practices of democratization.This research finding has important implications for conceptions of agency in theglobalized world.Törnberg and Törnberg (2016) combines Critical Discourse Analysis and topicmodeling to examine patterns of representation around the words Islam and Muslim ina 105 million word corpus of a large Swedish Internet forum from 2000 to 2013.Despite the increased importance of social media in the (re)production of discursivepower in society, this is the first study of its kind. The analysis shows that Muslimsare portrayed in the forum as a homogeneous outgroup that is embroiled in violence,conflict and extremism: identities that are described as emanating from Islam as areligion. These patterns are similar to but often more extreme versions of thosepreviously found in traditional media. This indicates that the internet forum seems toserve as an “online amplifier” that reflects and reinforces previous discourses intraditional media, which is likely to result in stronger polarizing effects on publicdiscourses.
Chapter Three Theoretical Framework and Methodology........................................... 15
3.1 Fairclough’s three-dimensional model............................................................15
3.2 Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar.........................................................17
3.3 Specific aspects analyzed in this research.......................................................18
Chapter Four Analysis and Discussion.........................................................................25
4.1 Identities of China and America constructed by the American news reports..25
4.2 Strategies of constructing identities of China and America by the Americannews reports...........................43
4.3 Possible reasons for the above-mentioned identity construction.................... 49
Chapter Five Conclusion..............................................................................................52
5.1 Major findings.................................................................................................52
5.2 Implications of the research............................................................................ 54
5.3 Limitations of current research and suggestions for future research...............54
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Chapter Four Analysis and Discussion
4.1 Identities of China and America constructed by the American news reports
As mentioned in Chapter three, transitivity construes the world of experienceinto six processes. In this chapter, transitivity in selected news reports about Sino-U.S.trade dispute will be discussed in detail.Table 4-1 shows that material process, relational process and verbal process takethe largest proportion in total numbers of process with 51.3%, 16.5% and 15.4%relatively followed by mental process and behavioral process with 9.4% and 6.8% andthe least process--existential process with 0.6%. Next, a contrastive analysis oftransitivity will be conducted. As there is a large number of process in selected newsreports, we won’t explain them one by one. Only the most representative exampleswill be taken to illustrate identities and ideologies constructed and revealed by thecurrent news reports. Besides, the verbal process overlapping with intertextuality is tobe analyzed in the interpretation part and the existential process is omitted because ofits small number and unrepresentativeness.President Trump’s latest move.Moreover, in addition to dealing with tariffs made by America, Chinese stocks arealso influenced. Chinese economy is described as debt-laden in the news report, and itseems that Chinese economy has become worse by the trade dispute with America. Incontrast, example (3) indicates America’s confidence on “winning” China in the tradedispute. America’s $200 billion in Chinese imports with tariffs is able to give China aheavy blow. The more amount of goods America bought from China enable Americato win China though with China’s retaliation on tariffs and influence China’s economy.Besides, as example (4) shows, America’s strong economy gives America superiorityover other countries and it’s other countries that need to change their trade behaviorsin the way America wants, let alone China
4.2 Strategies of constructing identities of China and America by the American newsreports
The second stage of Fairclough’s three-dimensional model is interpretation,which aims to discover the relationship between the text and the discourse practicethrough intertextuality analysis. In this part, strategies of reporting modes and newssources that are used to help construct the identities of China and America will bediscussed.As we can see, the total number of reporting modes related to America is fivetimes as much as that of China. The number of DS and IS in China-related reportingis nearly fifty-fifty. As for those related to America, IS is a little more than DS. Why isthere a so big difference of the total number and proportion of DS and IS of reportingmodes about China and America? One possible reason can be inferred from the newstitles of the selected news reports.From Table 4-4 we can see that only 4 pieces of news reports take China as thesubject. That’s to say most of the selected news reports start from the perspective ofAmerica. Actually, even in those 4 pieces of news reports, the content about Chinaonly takes a small part, drawing forth America’s opinions, countermeasures etc..Besides, The Washington Post, as one of the mainstream media in America, works asthe mouthpiece of America’s ideology and interests when reporting news about China.It’s reasonable for The Washington Post to report from the perspective of America.Second, the larger number of DS and IS related to America makes it seem morereliable, convincing and objective when stating America’s opinions andcountermeasures. As mentioned before, in IS, reporters can add their own ideas to thereported person’s thus convince the readers. The more number of IS in reportingAmerica reveals that The Washington Post is not so objective. However, readers aremore sensitive to the total number of quotations but less sensitive to the proportion ofIS and DS, let alone making a careful investigation into the number of DS and IS usedin news reports.Chapter Five ConclusionThe preceding chapter has discussed the identities of China and Americaconstructed in American newspapers within the framework of Critical DiscourseAnalysis and tries to explore the possible reasons for the identity construction. Thelast chapter arrives at a conclusion of the major findings of the study and points outboth the implications and limitations of the research and suggestions for futureresearch.5.1 Major findingsThe current research collects news reports from The Washington Post concerningthe Sino-U.S. trade dispute as research data, and analyzes from the perspective ofCritical Discourse Analysis together with Systemic-functional Grammar to exploreidentities of China and America constructed by American news reports and tries toexplore the possible reasons for the identity construction. Major findings of thisresearch can be concluded as follows.First, in the description stage, transitivity, modality and thematic choice of thenews reports are discussed in detail. From the analysis of four processes in transitivity,namely, the material process, the relational process, the mental process and thebehavioral process, The Washington Post mainly constructs China as a dishonestcountry. In contrast, America which is constructed as the victim of the trade disputealways takes legal measures to protect its interests and is winning the supports ofother countries. Besides, America’s behavior is justified and President Trumpadministration that is confident about America’s actions anchors its hope on China’sconcession to end the trade dispute. Through the manipulation of modality of differentvalues, America mainly models a powerless China and a strong America in the tradedispute. Besides, America intends to weaken its aggression as the starter of trade
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Chapter Five Conclusion
Economically speaking, in order to reverse the tradedeficit with China and protect America’s industry and secure employment, Americainitiatives the trade dispute with China. To beautify and justify its intention, Americaconstantly emphasizes China’s “illegal trade practice” and constructs China as adishonest, powerless and crafty country but America as a victim of the trade disputeand justify its practice as well as show its confidence to confuse readers. Politicallyspeaking, out of “America first” strategy and containing China’s rapid developmentand faced with mid-term presidential elections, President Trump administration willnaturally play the trade card by putting pressure on key trading partners to win overvoters in a bid to shore up the election. A powerless China and a strong, capableAmerica constructed by American mainstream newspapers in the lengthy tradedispute will largely pacify Americans and voters.
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