A Multicultural Discourse Analysis Of News Reports On Sino-EU Solar Disputes

International trade disputes refer to the disputes between trade partners when they are involved in the international trade activities.International trade disputes are not only economic,political and legal issues but also closely related to the discourse employed by trade partners within disputes.Even the manipulation of discourse can greatly influence the unfolding scenarios of some transnational trade disputes.Although scholars in related academic fields have paid extensive attention to the research on international trade disputes,few studies have highlighted the importance of the related media discourse from the perspective of linguistics.In view of the importance of this issue,this paper conducts a detailed comparative and contrastive analysis of 39 pieces of news reports on Sino-EU solar disputes from China Daily and 9 pieces from The Wall Street Journal from July,2012 to September,2013 based on the multicultural approaches to discourse analysis put forward by Professor Shi-xu with the purpose to answer the three key questions as follows:(1)What discourse strategies are used in the news reports on Sino-EU solar disputes in China Daily?(2)What are the differences in terms of the discourse strategies employed by the Chinese and foreign news media as well as the progress and shortcomings in terms of the discourse strategies employed in Chinese news reports based on the horizontal and vertical comparisons?(3)What implications could Chinese news media draw from the differences?This paper tries to further enrich the research methods and research content of trade disputes discourse under the guidance of the multicultural discourse analysis framework on the one hand.By taking a close look at the different discourse strategies maneuvered by Chinese and western media and the experience and defects of Chinese news reports,this paper also attempts to provide more useful suggestions to improve the effectiveness and acceptance of our news reports among EU trading partners and western viewers on the other.As a result,some suggestions are proposed according to the experience and defects in the discourse strategies of Chinese media mentioned above.First,the Chinese media should make more use of international rules and relevant regulations to enhance the authority and fairness of Chinese media.Second,Chinese media should optimize the composition of the discourse subjects to ensure the government,trade associations and other authoritative sources have enough say in the news reports and more "voices,could be heard from other discourse subjects who are actually linked to the Sino-EU solar disputes.Third,Chinese media should imply or even manifest the anti-sanctions on the EU in the news subject,so as to force the EU to reconsider or even change its decision which is not in favor of China.Fourth,Chinese media's responses to a whole string of questions raised by the EU should be based upon adequate reasoning and proofs instead of using hollow and conceptual expressions without evidence to prove it.Last but not the least,Chinese media should use more concrete and convincing figures and charts in the news reports to reinforce the persuasiveness of the news reports.