A Contrastive Study On Environmental Discourses In Chinese And Foreign Media

News reports cannot totally be objective.They are reported more or less with individual subjective views,sometimes with prejudice,hidden values and ideologies.Inspired by the idea that "Lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets" delivered at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China,this thesis studies the environmental discourses about air pollution in China in news reports which are collected from the authoritative medias at home and abroad,such as People ’s Daily and China Daily in China,BBC and The Guardian in Britain.Based on the Proximization Theory,this thesis makes a contrastive analysis on the environmental reports at home and abroad,and tries to reveal the differences and reasons behind the reports in Chinese and foreign newspapers,aiming to disclose the hidden relationship between language,ideology and power and to enrich the study of environmental discourse from different aspects.At the same time,in order to achieve qualitative and quantitative analysis,this thesis integrates corpus into the Critical-cognitive analysis.The corpus is a small corpus built by the author which provides reliable data support for this qualitative and quantitative analysis.The study finds that there are significant differences between Chinese and foreign news discourse,showing different ideologies.In reporting China’s environmental problems,Chinese media focuses on the description of the problem itself,highlighting the determination and action of the Chinese government to fight against the smog and the effective results of the struggle.It presents an image of a responsible country that actively controls environmental pollution to improve the living environment for sake of people’s health.Foreign media puts emphasis on commenting on the pollution and shows negative attitudes towards China,indicating that China is a politically unstable country facing many problems for Chinese government deliberately buries the evidence of environmental pollution and falsely issues pollution index as well as prioritizes economic interest over public health,which demonstrates that the Chinese government and its officials’irresponsibility.The proximization analysis of environmental news discourse at home and abroad shows that on the spatial,temporal and axiological axis,Chinese media lays particular emphasis on the employment of spatial axis,utilizing spatial proximization strategies to enhance the legitimacy and necessity of pollution prevention and control,while foreign media stresses the use of temporal axis,emphasizing that pollution has always been existed,which has a far-reaching impact on both the past and the future.On the axiological axis,Chinese media shows more positive values,focusing on the positive actions embodied by the Chinese government,such as prevention,treatment,promulgation of policies and regulations to solve pollution problems;while the foreign media focuses on the presentation negative values of Chinese government,reporting that China is the source of pollution and Chinese government as the main reason should be to blame for heavy pollution.Finally,the author presents two three-dimensional diagrams of discourse space based on the environmental discourses of Chinese and foreign media.In the discourse space of Chinese media,Chinese government and people are situated in the deictic center and some local Chinese officials and factories which violated rules are regarded as the peripheral entities outside the discourse space;while in the discourse space of foreign media,America is positioned in the deictic center and Chinese government as well as the industrial factories are viewed as the encroaching peripheral outside the deictic center.In conclusion,different discourse producers possess various standpoints which can influence readers’ viewpoints.