A Corpus-Based Critical Discourse Analysis Of Syrian Refugee Issue Reports In The Times And The Washington Post

In recent years,the number of Syrian refugees is constantly increasing in the aftermath of Syrian domestic war.On September,2015,a picture of a three-year-old Syrian boy who died on the Turkish beach became the hot topic on major social media,which aroused worldwide sympathy.Then attention paid by ordinary people came to an unprecedented height and media in the world gave their great length.At present,researches on Syrian refugee issue are mostly about its current situation,its influence on neighboring and European countries,and its relation with the United States as well as the humanitarian aid.These researches are mainly conducted from the perspectives of sociology or political science while a research from the angle of a linguistic theory is limited.This study is a critical discourse analysis on British and American attitudes towards Syrian refugees as well as their focus and the ideology hidden behind them by building up two mini-corpora.The corpora in the present study come from the reporting articles on Syrian refugee issue in The Times and The Washington Post(44 articles respectively)and then are built into two mini-corpora.Based on the theoretical framework of Fairclough's Three-dimensional analytic model,three stages are operated in succession that are descriptive,interpretative and explanative stages into which keywords,transitivity,concordance lines and intertextuality are analyzed.It can be said that it is a study from the microscopic to the macroscopic which combining quantitative and qualitative analysis.The conclusions are:1)there are similarities between The Times and The Washington Post.Both of them report domestic and foreign aid to the refugees as well as their situations comprehensively;2)in terms of keyword frequency,the keywords of high-frequency in The Times are most neutral and positive;but most negative words in The Washington Post,such as Paris terrorist attack and other countries'nonfeasance;3)The Times is inclined to report the aid provided by its own country,whether from the official or from the folk,paying attention to its benevolent image;while The Washington Post makes the reports whether they are rescue or rejection of its own country,emphasizing its fair image as a world power.The significance of this research are:it is beneficial to overcome the individual's over-subjectivity and partiality in CDA,which has long been criticized by some scholars;2)it is conductive to cultivate readers'critical thinking awareness,thereby enhancing the reading judgment.