A Study On Chinese Smog Reports In America And China-From The Perspective Of Critical Discourse Analysis

Since 2013,smog weather in China has been increasingly serious.The smog pollution has seriously influenced people’s daily life.Thus smog problems have attracted wide public concern.Newspapers in China and America both devote much space to Chinese smog problems.Studies on news reports from the angle of critical discourse analysis mainly focus on political,economical and cultural news.However,studies about environmental news,especially on smog pollution are relatively few.The current study tries to conduct a critical analysis on Chinese smog news reports in China Daily and The Washington Post within the framework of Fairclough’s three-dimensional model,hoping to find out the similarities and differences of smog news reports in the two newspapers and help Chinese readers better understand the news they have read.After analyzing the two corpora,the study finds some similarities and differences in the smog news from China Daily and The Washington Post.They are mainly as follows: the reporters from China and America both pay great attention to smog problems in China.They are both concerned with various aspects of smog problems such as causes,the serious effects,the measures taken by the government and the public’s response to the problem.However,when they report the news,there are some differences.In terms of transitivity,the reporters choose different processes and participants to report the events.In terms of modality,the reporters from the two newspapers use different modal verbs to maintain their own nation’s interests.It is not difficult to find that the reporters from the two countries are affected by their ideology when reporting the news.In their reports,although the reporters from both countries address the smog problems from various aspects,there are some differences between them.When reporting the effects of smog problems,American reporters highlight the seriousness of smog,while Chinese reporters are more objective in their reports.In reporting the response of the government and the public to the problem,American reporters stress the low efficiency of Chinese government and the less concern of the public.However,Chinese reporters pay more attention to the effective measures taken by the government and active cooperation of thepublic.From these,it can be seen that when writing news reports,the reporters often manipulate language to protect their own country’s interests and maintain their respective government’s stance.