Discourse Analysis Of Japan's Mainstream Newspapers Coverage Of "The Belt And Road" Report

With the development of the “The Belt and Road”,more and more international media have shown strong interest in this issue.On the one hand,Japan and China have fierce competition in southeast Asia and other countries along the "The Belt and Road".On the other hand,Japan is eager to use the market brought by China's rise to promote its own economic development.Although Japan is neither a country along the “The Belt and Road” nor an official participant in the “The Belt and Road”,Japan is a strong competitor and an important partner of “The Belt and Road”.In some major bidding projects in Southeast Asia,Sino-Japanese competition has become the bargaining chip of the host country.In recent years,however,there has been an "inflection point" in the rivalry between China and Japan: the two governments have started to discuss how to develop third-country co-operation among the countries along the "The Belt and Road".This article selects the reports of Japan's three major newspapers,“Asahi Shimbun”,“Yomiuri Shimbun” and “Daily News”from September 2013 to December2018 as a sample.After deep reading of 193 Japanese samples,using Vatican's discourse analysis theory.This paper attempts to explore what theme structure and lexical style are used by Japanese mainstream media to construct China's "The Belt and Road" image.What is the significance of such thematic structure and lexical style?What are the characteristics of Japanese mainstream media discourse ?The study found that there are five types of “The Belt and Road” reports in the mainstream media of Japan.The media constructs the image of "One Belt And One Road" by using the title of the theme structure,similar news schema,diversified organizational forms,derogatory words,indirect quotes,Numbers and so on.At the same time,the mainstream media in Japan showed different stages in the “The Belt and Road” report,which can be divided into three stages: early bad-mouthing,medium-term wait-and-see and recent cooperation.In the process of the transformation from competition to cooperation between China and Japan,the Japanese mainstream media,regardless of their political positions,only played the role of followers of the Japanese government and did not play the role of guiding public opinion and promoting the cooperation between the two countries.This finding has some reference value for strengthening and improving the overseas communication strategy of "The Belt and Road" initiative.