A Comparative Study Of Official And Folk Discourses On Anti-corruption News

The main research question in this thesis is: do there exist consistency and diversity between official discourse and folk discourse in anti-corruption cases? If they do exist,how consistency and diversity are presented? In fact,this question can be divided into two specific questions: First,how do official discourse and folk discourse construct their own discourse spaces on the same anti-corruption case? Is there any contradictionin the process of construction? Second,faced with the same anti-corruption case,do folk discourse andofficial discourse make use of and promote each other? If they do,how do they realize and present? In order to study this question,the author selects the “Ling Jihua Corruption Case”as a case study.By taking the People's Daily as the official discourse sample sourceand theTianyaCommunity as the folk discourse sample source,the author will analyze these two different discourses and explore the consistency and diversity in double discourse space.The study finds thatthere exist both consistency and diversity between the official discourse and the folk discourse in the “Ling Jihua Corruption Case”.The consistency lies in the shaping of Ling Jihua'scorruption image as well asthe publicizing of the government's anti-corruption image,while the diversity exists in the expressive strategies of the two discourse spaces.In choosing expressive strategies,the official discourse tends to avoid key issues and stress the positive aspect of negative news,whilethe folk discourse often usesbanter language and diverse interpretations.In this case,these two discourse spaces show that it is the folk discourse that draws lessons from the official discourse.Meanwhile,thediverse interpretations and the independent metaphorsystem of the folk discourse also lead tothe dialogue contradictionbetween the two discourse spaces.