Value-Orientation Change Constructed From Main Stream Media Discourse: A Critical Discourse Study On Two Editorials About Tangshan And Wenchuan Earthquake In People's Daily

This study aims to investigate how the Chinese value-orientation changes by examining the language strategies and language structures in two editorials about Tangshan and Wenchuan earthquake from People's Daily. Both of these two earthquakes are disastrous, with the magnitude of 7.8 and 8.0 respectively. What's more, the duration between them are more than 30 years from the year 1976 to 2008, which nearly overlaps with the 30 years of China's reform and opening up policy. Drawing on the theories of ideology in discourse and the constitutive power of discourse, this study makes a discourse analysis of the two editorials and reveals the social change from Maoism and class struggle to people-oriented and harmonious society.As for the methodology in this study, three methods have been applied. They are the analysis of addressing, the analysis of linguistic rituals and the analysis of generic structure, all of which together give an overall study of the two editorials from a single pronoun to some sentences and then to the structure of the whole texts. Through the joint application of the three methods, this paper finds that: 1) the language in these two editorials respectively constitutes the identities of the participants in each of them, 2) the language in these two editorials respectively constitutes the power and solidarity between the leader and the common people in each of them, and 3) discourse has ideology. The social world the language has respectively constituted reflects the value-orientation change from Maoism and class struggle to a people-oriented and harmonious society.