Identifying First Ladies In Chinese And American Media: A Corpus-based Approach

Identity plays a more and more important role in people’s life; besides anincreasing number of linguists pay attention to identity construction. Identity studiesboth at home and abroad are generally divided into national identity, collectiveidentity, and personal identity. This thesis, through studying the identity of Chinesefirst lady Peng Liyuan and that of American first lady Michelle, explores howpersonal identity is constructed.This thesis aims to explore the constructed identity of Peng Liyuan andMichelle in Chinese and American media and the specific constructing process. Thepresent thesis will adopt both quantitative and qualitative methods，and based on thecollected news reports two corpuses will be constructed—Corpora A and Corpora C,which will be analyzed with the help of the software Antconc3.2.4. In case of theory,critical discourse analysis (CDA), in the process of analyzing discourses, not onlyfocuses on the discourse itself but also focuses on how the discourse is produced.Therefore, critical discourse analysis will be chosen in this thesis as the guidingthought to explore more potential information. Under CDA, scholars put forwardvarious theories, among which Van Leeuwen’s theory of representation of socialactors provides a suitable theoretical framework for identity study. Thus, this thesiswill employ the theory of representation of social actors to analyze the identity of thetwo first ladies.According to the researching result, it is showed that there exist bothsimilarities and differences in Chinese and American media in identifying PengLiyuan and Michelle. Through the further discussion on the influential factors, it reveals the ideology and opinions of Chinese and American media, which has apractical significance on developing people’s critical awareness to news.