Media Discourse Analysis Of Foreign-related Disputes

It is still currently not known that what kind of the role the mass media plays and how discourse strategically constructs the legitimacy of the discourse subject and foreign-related disputes.Based on qualitative discourse analysis combining with quantitative framework analysis,this paper takes the discourse of "People's Daily Overseas Edition" in the "South China Sea Arbitration Case" as an example to explore the discourse and discourse strategies of mainstream media in foreign disputes.According to the “process-event analysis” model,this paper divides the “South China Sea Case” into three stages: the initial of the dispute,the middle of the dispute and the end of the dispute.And then based on various stages of foreign disputes combining the macro-level coverage and timeliness,the meso-level intervention factors and framework strategies and the micro-level discourse with event progress,we can explore the role of mainstream media in foreign dispute events.Mainstream media define,supplement and fix the news coverages of foreign-related disputes and the legitimacy of the government`s words and deeds.At the same time,these three functions reveal that the mainstream media can make micro-discourse changes and framing processes under the dual containment of the event development and the government attitudes in the external spread.The “experts and the scholars ” of the country play the role of “spokesperson” on the issue of the foreign-related disputes.The government officials are “ main-news-definition people” and play as a decisive role in the media discourse strategy.The media selectively report the parties of the dispute and achieve a strategic presentation of the dispute issue.After these,7 articles during the 2013-2016 dispute evolution node are selected to be explored by the systematic discourse analyses.It is found that the media discourse of foreign dispute has obvious intention,which is a process of manufacturing meanings.Use the moral label and metaphor to present the identity of the parties;the metaphor,"prototype precipitation" idiom and break words to achieve the agreed language of the semantic association;the moral modal verbs to establish a mechanism that can rationalize the country's response.The news and the official language of the parties establish the intertextuality to achieve the function of representation.According to the general demonstration model,the official political position embedded in the specific news reports and the media discourse with attribution mechanism may close to the mainstream ideology.The study presents the models of the relationship between the media and the government,the media and the dispute events,which enhance our understanding of the media coverages in foreign-related disputes.Moreover,we can achieve our strategic communication with the power of the media in the future-related disputes.