摘 要

1.Introduction 1

1.1 Need for the study 1

1.2 Research purpose 1

1.3 Structure of the Study 2

1.4 Methodology of the Study 2

2.Literature Review 3

2.1 Critical discourse analysis 3

2.2 Corpus Technology 4

3.Analysis of High Frequency Words 6

4.Analysis of Key Words 8

5.Conclusion 10

References 11

Acknowledgments 13

Abstract

Recently, the China-US trade war has become an important issue affecting China-US relations and even the process of globalization. Chinese and foreign media have also reported on China-US trade relations many times. In general, news discourse is considered to be an unbiased record of objective world facts, and the language is without any emotional color. However, news discourse is also produced in the context of specific social conditions and ideologies, and in fact always implies ideology. As far as the China-US trade war is concerned, in order to meet the needs of different social and cultural backgrounds between China and the United States, there are also great differences in the reporting of this incident. CDA as an important method of discourse analysis is itself devoted to the study of the relationship between language, power and consciousness. It can reveal how social culture and power influence the generation of ideology and discourse, and how linguistic forms and structures reflect ideology and social culture.

This paper selects China Daily and CNBC's many news reports on China-US trade wars, and builds a corpus to conduct critical discourse analysis on high-frequency words and keywords, by comparing the language chosen by Chinese and foreign media in reporting the same incident of China-US trade war, it reveals the relationship between language and ideology in news discourse.

Keywords: Critical discourse analysis; China-US trade war; news discourse; corpus

中文摘要

近年来，中美贸易战已成为影响中美关系乃至全球化的重要问题。中外媒体也多次报道中美贸易关系，一般认为新闻报道是客观世界事实的公正记录，语言没有任何情感色彩。然而，新闻话语也是在特定的社会条件和意识形态背景下产生的，事实上总是隐含着意识形态。就中美贸易战而言，为了满足中美两国不同社会文化背景的需要，这一事件的报道也存在很大差异，批判性话语分析作为一种重要的话语分析方法，本身就致力于研究语言和意识形态以及社会权利之间的关系。它可以揭示意识形态和话语如何从社会结构和权力关系中衍生出来，以及如何服务于社会结构和权力关系。

本文通过选取《中国日报》和CNBC中多篇关于中美贸易战的新闻报道，建立了语料库，对其中的高频词和关键词进行批判性话语分析，通过对比中外媒体在报道中美贸易战这一相同事件时所选用的语言，揭示出在新闻语篇中语言与意识形态之间的关系。

关键词：批判性话语分析；中美贸易战；新闻语篇；语料库

Introduction

• 1. Need for the study

As we all know, although China and the United States have already established trade relations, the relationship between the two countries has always been frictional. In 2018, the Trump administration disregarded the Chinese dissuasion, insisted on launching a trade war, set off a China-US trade war, and caused domestic and foreign media to report. Generally speaking, news reports should be objective and fair, but in fact, influenced by specific social conditions and ideological background, the language contains different ideologies. Fowler pointed out: “The 'content' of newspapers is not facts about the world, but in a very general sense 'ideas'. Language is not neutral, but a highly constructive mediator. ”[1] As an important discourse analysis method, critical discourse analysis based on Halliday's systemic-functional grammar and hopes to study the relationship between language, culture and ideology. Through the study of Chinese and foreign media's news reports on China-US trade wars, this paper analyzes the relationship between news discourse and ideology, and helps us to deeply understand the essence of news reports of different nationalities and the hidden ideology after the reports.

1.2 Research purpose

This study selects the China-US trade war as a news event, collects news reports from foreign media on this same event and builds a corpus, and conducts critical discourse analysis on the vocabulary used in news discourse, trying to help the readers understand the following aspects: 1. When reporting the same news event, the differences in language choice between Chinese and foreign media? 2. How are ideology and cultural background influence news reports and how does news discourse reflect ideology? 3. How do these news reports reflect the relationship between China and U.S.?

As a tool for expressing ideas, language is not completely objective and fair. The news discourse does not simply reflect the event itself, but directly participates in it and has an impact on people's thoughts. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to reveal the interaction between language, power and ideology through critical discourse analysis of news discourse by conducting a critical discourse analysis of Chinese and English news reports of the same events.

1.3 Structure of the Study

This thesis is composed of five chapters. The first chapter is the introduction which contains three parts-need, purpose and structure of the study. Chapter two focuses on the review of the literature, including critical discourse analysis theory of news discourse and application of corpus technology in critical discourse analysis of news discourse. Chapter three mainly analyzes the high frequency words in the selected reports, and Chapter four focuses on the keywords that appear in the report. The last chapter is the conclusion of the thesis, which describes the main findings, meanings. More importantly, it inspires people to look at news reports rationally by revealing the nature of news discourse.

1.4 Methodology of the Study

This paper selects China Daily and CNBC's many news reports on China-US trade wars, and uses AntConc to build a simple corpus to conduct critical discourse analysis on the languae of those news. Firstly, I build a high frequency words corpus, and analysis the 20 vocabulary with the highest frequency in the China Daily corpus and the CNBC corpus. Then I select the American Contemporary English Corpus COCA to search and compare China Daily and CNBC news keywords corpus. By comparing the language chosen by Chinese and foreign media in reporting the same incident of China-US trade war, it reveals the relationship between language and ideology in news discourse.

2. Literature Review

Critical discourse analysis is a discourse analysis method that Western linguists represented by Roger Fowler have revealed the dialectical relationship between language and ideology through superficial language since the 1970s. One of the main research objects of critical discourse analysis is news discourse analysis. As a news language of social practice, it reflects social reality from various angles, and reproduces ideology to influence people's attitudes, values, beliefs, etc., so that the ideology and power relations behind the language and the interests of the representatives of the right to speak are naturalized. Critical discourse analysis focuses on the power relations and inequalities of language, explores the hidden power relations in discourse and social cultural forms, analyzes the implicit ideology in discourse, and exposes the inequalities, injustices, discrimination and prejudice in discourse. Roger Fowler pioneered a critical analysis of news discourse. He believes that “news reports are not as objective and fair as we think, but imply an ideology.” [1] However, for a long time, it has been dominated by qualitative research, and is constrained by the interpretation of individual texts or text fragments. Qualitative research methods have been criticized by some scholars for their preference for subjectivity and lack of representation. Critical discourse analysis should not be limited to the analysis of text fragments, but should be based on large-scale sample surveys on the generality of typical language use. [2]

2.1 Critical discourse analysis