Discourse Analysis From The Perspective Of Constructional Ideology

The climate problems are so severe that rising seas, decline in food production, global food crisis, climate-related migration, violent conflicts and some other worst climate catastrophes are expected to happen with the emission of GHS, which should be reduced considering its bad impacts on human community and the world as a whole. Thus, countries around the world are attempting to find out the way addressing climate change issues. Though several climate conferences have been held in an effort to make commitment to emission cutbacks, there are still many ramifications among different countries concerning climate change issues. The fact that climate change mitigation requires international cooperation has gained wide consensus, but the fundamental problems as to who should take the lead in combating climate change are still debated and discussed. Particularly,2012is the year when the first commitment period (2005-2012) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Kyoto Protocol expires. Durban Climate Conference was held under this circumstance at the end of2011, and countries around the world are attempting to find a resolution to climate mitigation and adaptation. It was in this very conference that China was piled great pressure by developed countries, the US in particular, to accept mandatory emission reduction.This dissertation aims to explain the underlying power relation reflected by policies adopted by America in addressing climate change issues by examining the discourse of emission reduction of both America and China. The author hypothesizes that there is a power dominance conducted on developing countries by developed countries (the United States in particular) in terms of negotiations on emission reduction. After the analysis of climate change discourse of both developing countries and developed countries (China and America as representations), the author aims at providing new standpoints in explaining the climate policies of different countries from cross-cultural and ideological perspective.Data in this paper mainly consist of on-line-version news reports concerning climate negotiations between different countries on the official websites of some news agencies and newspapers. Most of all, the author chooses report from the on-line-version of "The New York Times", and "Xinhua Net". Through collecting rich data from various sources, including news reports, institutional publications, academic literature, etc., the author analyzes the discourses of climate change negotiations in the whole process from multiple aspects, such as participants involved, strategies exercised, relationships constructed and cultural attributes demonstrated.Through different strategies employed by the two countries, we can easily witness its hidden power relation. In Gramsci’s Theory of Cultural Hegemony, he viewed that the way of dominance by western countries is not through violence but through propaganda, by imposing the ideological leadership on developing countries. In today’s world, the media hegemony becomes one of the main representations of cultural hegemony considering the media’s vital position in propagating and influencing audiences. One of the most important characteristics of media hegemony is its inclusion of the negative character of foreign news coverage, especially Third World countries, which can be illustrated from the reporting concerning climate change issues in NYT. Besides, China boasts such characteristics as conservatism, nationalism, as well as Confucianism in negotiating with developed countries on cutbacks of GHG emissions. China’s mute response and its tendency to achieve harmony with developed countries demonstrate China’s traditional way of addressing conflict, with harmonious relationship established as a priority. In this thesis, the author sincerely lays out the disputes and ramifications concerning climate change negotiations between China and the United States by pointing out the unbalanced power relation invested in the process and the America’s hegemony hidden in ideology and culture are the real underlying reasons for such ramifications.