| Cognitive narratology is a new interdisciplinary branch. It is based on cognitive science and focuses on the interactions between readers and authors at the cognitive level. It reveals different cognitive processes under different narrative features. Cognitive narratology pays more attention to the context rather than the text itself. Narrative understanding is the process of reconstructing and updating the cognitive model. In this thesis, we will use quantitative and qualitative analytical methods to analyze different narrative structures and cognitive processes of the two earthquake reports from the cognitive-narratological perspective.Tangshan earthquake and Wenchuan earthquake have been of the largest magnitude in China since liberation. The loss of lives and property and social impact of these two earthquakes are also the most serious. Van Dijk’s news schema is used to analyze separate narrative structures and Wang Yin’s cognitive world analytical method is used to analyze cognitive models in two earthquake reports. Cognitive process is a process of interaction between readers and writers at cognitive level. Blanks are intentionally left by writers and text hints are given for readers, readers can activate knowledge in cognitive world, update cognitive schema, fill the missing blanks, then interact with writers at cognitive level.Through the systematic analysis of narrative structures and cognitive models, we naturally get the reasons for different cognitive processes. From cognitive perspective, there is lots of information especially historical background information missing in news discourse which leads to different cognitive scripts in both readers and writers’ minds. From social perspective, with the influence of the development level of media and governments’ different attitudes for natural disasters during various periods, emphasis of news reports has changed. This thesis hopes to shed some lights on analysis of news discourse from cognitive-narratological perspective. |
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