A Study Of China’s National Image In American Media

This thesis studies China’s national image from the perspective of linguistics under the theoretical foundation of Appraisal Theory,which is different from most of the previous studies that conducts the national image from the perspectives of communication and international relations.Many studies on China-related news texts in American media have shown that American mass media is spreading many China’s negative events to destroy the image of China,while some American journalists have suggested that the American media do not attempt to demonize China,and they just treat China equal to other countries.To explore this complex phenomenon,this study will be devoted to make a comparison on China-related and Japan-related news reports in one American medium.The reason why this author chooses news samples from CNN is that the online news becoming more and more influential,with the widely uses of internet.Japan is an ally of the US,and its economy is basically the same as that of China.Thus,Japan is a appropriate contract object in this study.The research procedures are presented as follows:(1)download the China-related and Japan-related coverage from CNN and divides them into different news topics according to its content;(2)annotate the attitude resources based on the Appraisal Theory with the software UAM Corpus Tool 3.3f;(3)contrast the distributions of attitude resources in different news topics in China-related newsreports;(4)contrast the distributions of attitude resources in China-related and Japan-related news reports;(5)analysis China’s national image that constructed in CNN.Through the classification and analysis,the thesis arrives at the following findings:(1)American media pay more attention to China than Japan according to the statistical data of the research samples in this study,from which it is concluded that American keeps more watchful to China.(2)China’s national image constructed by American media is complex and diverse,for different national images have been built while different issues have been concerned in the samples.(3)Environment problems and chairman Xi have received much attention from American media,with a relatively negative image in environment image,and relatively positive image in leader image.(4)American media have built the similar cultural image,social image and military image while comparing between China-related and Japan-related news reports.(5)American media have constructed some differences from Japan’s national image as far as China’s economic image,political image,technology image and disaster image are concerned.(6)Affect resources take up the smallest part in the distribution of attitude resources in both China-related and Japan-related news texts,in terms of subsystems of attitude resources.