The Discourse Change Of The Mainstream Media's Reports On The Issue Of Garbage

China's environmental problems are becoming increasingly serious.Air pollution,water pollution,and garbage disposal are the three most serious problems.With the increasing social discussion on the issue of garbage,news reports on the issue of garbage have increased year by year.As a representative of mainstream media in China,the change of discourse on garbage reflects the cognitive change of society,and its related research should be given more attention.Based on the perspective of environmental communication and the critical discourse analysis theory of Fairclough,this paper conducts a diachronic analysis of 1538 reports in 42 years by taking all the articles and texts related to "garbage" in People's Daily from 1978 to 2019 as the research objects.The main body of the paper is divided into four parts:the analysis of news text,the practice of news discourse,the practice of society and culture,the analysis of social cognitive shift.It focuses on the questions about "how has the People's Daily,as a representative of China's mainstream media,covered the garbage issue for more than 40 years?how has People's Daily constructed discourse on the issue of garbage?what kind of social cognitive shift is reflected behind the discourse change of People's Daily on garbage issue?" At the level of text analysis,this paper analyzes the overall trend of reports from six aspects:quantity,layout,length,attitude,genre and source.At the level of discourse practice,after reading through 1538 reports,the research summarized seven reporting topics of "turning waste into treasure","hazardous disaster","resisting dumping","scientific treatment","incineration and landfill","classified recycling","management by politics" and analyzed the competition among them.At the level of social and cultural practice,this paper divided the four historical contexts of "deficiency--germination--development--perfection",and analyzed the interaction between report texts and social and cultural practice in various periods.Finally,the paper discusses the social cognitive shift behind the discourse change of environmental reporting.It is found that the change of discourse reflects the change of Chinese society's cognition of the relationship between man and nature and even the mainstream cognition of society,which is always reflected in the profound influence of media discourse practice.