A Comparative Attitudinal Analysis Of Reports On “Sino-US Trade War” By China Daily And The New York Times From The Perspective Of News Narrative

With the announcement of Trump administration on March 22^nd,2018 that"due to the infringement of intellectual property rights,$50 billion worth of the tariffs will be imposed on Chinese goods and investment restrictions will be implemented",the“Sino-US trade war”officially kicked off.Against that backdrop,the news media of China and the United States have carried out a lot of reports on the incident.As we all know,news reports are equipped with several characteristics,namely prompt,objective and informative,which play a huge role in information dissemination in modern society and become an important medium for people to learn about the world.The information provided by news reports often has the function of guiding the public.However,it is worth noting that in the process of narrating,news narrators often use a large number of evaluation resources to directly or indirectly express the attitude and position of the state or even individuals.Therefore,this thesis takes the attitude system of Appraisal Theory and the news narratology as the discourse analysis tools,and makes a comparative analysis of the news reports about the“Sino-US trade war”,aiming to help readers understand the ideology and interpersonal significance behind the news.Appraisal Theory is firstly proposed by J.R.Martin in the 1990s.It contains three subsystems:Attitude,Engagement and Graduation.Attitude is the core of evaluation system,including three sub-systems:emotion,judgment and appreciation,which evaluate the attitudinal predisposition of subjects from different perspectives.We know news report is a very typical and far-reaching narrative work.In the process of narrating,the narrator would use a lot of evaluation resources and narrative means to show the narrative theme.Thus,it is of great significance to study the narrative characteristics and rules of“Sino-U.S.trade war”news narrative discourse and how the attitude resources are deployed in the discourse.Admittedly,China Daily and The New York Times are one of the most influential and representative media in China and the United States respectively.In view of this,based on the theory of news narratology,this thesis firstly summarizes the narrative characteristics of the two newspapers'news reports about the“Sino-US trade war”.On this basis,this thesis takes the attitude system of Appraisal Theory as the analysis framework,and uses the method of qualitative and quantitative analysis to make a comparative analysis of 60 news narrative discourses of the two newspapers,aiming to answer the following four research questions:1.What are the narrative characteristics and rules of China Daily and The New York Times'news narrative discourses about the“Sino-US trade war”?2.What are the similarities and differences of the narrator's evaluative attitudinal resources in the news narrative discourses of China Daily and The New York Times about the“Sino-US trade war”?3.How do narrators of China Daily and The New York Times use attitudinal resources to achieve the narrative theme in the process of narrating?4.Based on the above analysis of news narrative discourses,what kind of ideologies do the news reports reflect?In addition,the development of“Sino-US trade war”is characterized by three stages:the start-up stage,the implementation stage and the upgrading stage.Therefore,in order to get a more detailed understanding,based on the time span of each of the three stages,this thesis collects 60 news narrative discourses from March 22^nd,2018to January 24^th,2019 to carry out a comparative study and explore the similarities and differences of the stages.Through the research and analysis of the above four questions,this thesis can draw the following conclusions:For the first question,first of all,through research and analysis,we find that the categories of news narrators in the two newspapers are consistent.In the news report of this event,there is not only"overt narrator",that is,news writer/reporter himself/herself,but also"covert narrator",that is,news commentator.Secondly,the news narrative objects of the two newspapers are similar,which are divided into six categories:tariff policy,economic impact,industry response,editorial attitude,and national measure as well as Trump administration.Thirdly,because of the structural characteristics of news itself,according to the macro semantics structure,namely theme,the stylistic structure of the“Sino-US trade war”news narrative discourse is consistent in the macro level,that is,“overview-plot-result-verbal response-commentary”.Fourthly,this thesis focuses on the"identity focalization of character",finding that the narrative characters focalized of the two newspapers are divided into four categories:scholars?political scientists,economists,etc.?,Trump,political appointees and industry participants?relevant industry insiders involved in the trade war?.In a word,this thesis analyzes the narrative characteristics and rules of the two newspapers'news narrative discourse from a macro perspective,so as to make a phased analysis of the use of the attitude resources of the two newspapers on the same narrative elements,which is more comparable.With regard to the second and third questions,based on the characteristics and rules of news narratives about“Sino-US trade war”,this thesis makes a comparative study of the 60 news narratives discourses,and draws the following conclusions.Firstly,from a macro point of view,in the three stages,the narrators?overt narrators and convert narrators?of the two media are consistent in the use of attitude resources.Both narrators mainly use Judgment resources to express their attitudes and positions in narrative news discourse.Specifically speaking,the overt narrators?news writers?use more Appreciation resources,followed by Judgment resources and Affect resources,which shows that both media are in line with the value orientation of news reports and follow the principle of objective and fair news reports.We know that among the three subsystems of Affect,Judgment and Appreciation,Affect resources are mainly the direct feelings of the narrator on the external things,belonging to the most subjective perceptual knowledge,while Appreciation is mainly the cognition and judgment of the narrator on the phenomenon of things,belonging to the most objective rational knowledge.Therefore,the research results also prove the news value of the two newspapers from another perspective.Secondly,the two media have similarities and differences in the choice of narrative object categories.At the start-up stage,the two media mainly take"economic impact"as the narrative object,and use more negative attitude resources in the narrative discourse,which shows that the two media are worried about the impact of the trade war.At the implementation and upgrading stage,both media take“editorial attitude”as the main narrative object.As“commentators”,the media evaluate the event the trade war itself.And negative attitudinal evaluative resources are mainly deployed in the narrative discourse,which indicates that both media disapprove of Trump and his administration's action of launching the trade war.It is worth noting that The New York Times takes"Trump administration"as the narrative object at the implementation stage,but the news report of China Daily does not involve this narrative object,because the focus of the reports is“economic impact”in this phase.Although the positions of The New York Times and the U.S.government are not the same,the essence of the media is always to comment on the event from the standpoint of U.S.interests.The choice of narrative objects and the use of attitude resources are closely related to the differences of ideology and national interests between the two countries.Thirdly,it is found that the attitude resources whose distribution features reveal the narrative elements contained in each narrative part in the two newspapers run through the whole text.In the part of“overview”,the application of attitude resources of the two newspapers is consistent;that is to say,attitude resources are the least compared with ones in the other parts,which shows that the two newspapers are in line with the emotional tendency of news,namely"objective and equitable".Of course,this has a lot to do with the number of words in this part of the content.We know that the title and the lead of news which aims to summarize the general idea of the news should not be lengthy,so the number of attitude resources is less than that in the other parts.The other reason is that unlike entertainment news,political and economic news reports are more serious,and there are not too many attitude evaluation words in the title and the lead.In contrast,the parts“plot,result and verbal response”of narrative structure of the two newspapers are full of attitude resources,because the event is reported in detail,and various attitudinal words will be used to express the narrator's position and view towards the event in the process of narrating.However,in the“commentary”part,there are huge differences in the use of attitude resources between the two media in the three stages.On the whole,China Daily uses less attitude resources in this part than the other parts,which shows that the newspaper tries it best to keep the objectivity of news and minimize the comments and opinions of journalists and newspaper themselves.Compared with this,The New York Times uses more attitude resources in this part,which shows that the newspaper pays more attention to the expression of its own attitude.To some extent,this is related to the nature of the newspaper itself and American social culture.As we all know,The New York Times is independent of the U.S.government,which means it is autonomous,so the language style of news writing is more flexible,journalists and media relatively emphasize more on personal freedom of speech.As a result,there are always a lot of attitudinal evaluative words mixed in the comments.Fourthly,from the perspective of the frequency of discourse of narrative characters focalized,The New York Times is more than China Daily.To a certain extent,this reflects the narrative characteristics of the news reports of the two newspapers-The New York Times is flexible in the way of story expression.It coordinates all sources of information and quote others'narrative discourses,aiming to present the objectivity of the reported information,and at the same time,it can expresses its attitude and position by using the rich attitudinal resources of others'discourses.In addition,it can be found that China Daily focuses more on scholars'discourses and political appointees,while The New York Times focuses more on the discourses of Trump and political appointees.What's more,from the perspective of the use of attitude resource in the discourse of the narrative character focalized,“Scholars”and“political appointees”mainly deploy the negative attitude resources in their discourses,while positive attitude resources are used more in the discourses of“Trump”and“industry participants”.The result is caused by the different narrative objects of these four types of characters.However,it's a fact that journalists are purposeful and selective with regard to the application and quotation of discourses of“interviewee”,namely the narrative character focalized.To a large extent,the views and positions of the narrative characters focalized are consistent with those of the media themselves.Therefore,through the study of the categories of“identity focalization of character”and the application of attitude resources in discourse,we can judge the positions and views of the media,which is conducive to our critical reading of the news reports.On the fourth question,based on a detailed analysis of the first three research questions,this thesis finds that the news reports of the two media reflect the different ideologies of“Sino-US trade war”to a certain extent,namely neo-liberalism and socialism,economic nationalism and“a community of shared future of mankind”.American neo-liberalism has obvious characteristics of neo-imperialism.It constantly pushes its values to other countries through coercion and inducement.After Trump came to power,he proposes to replace"free trade"with the so-called"fair trade",and believes that the United States had been treated unfairly in the process of foreign trade,requiring all trading countries to converge with the United States and set the same tariff rate.It is not hard to find that the core of Trump's economic concepts is neo-liberalism.Socialism,or Marxism,serves the proletarian revolution and the cause of human liberation as a whole.Its most distinctive political position is the fundamental interests of the proletariat and the working people.At the same time,economic nationalism is obviously embodied in the event of the"Sino-US trade war"launched by Trump administration.Trump's goal in power is to"make America strong again"and strive to maintain its hegemonic position.Trump government launches a trade war against China,restricts the import of Chinese goods,and imposes high tariffs on Chinese goods,which is the embodiment of its trade protectionism.Different from economic nationalism,“a community of shared future of mankind”advocates:benefit sharing,win-win development,shared responsibilities and risks.In the“Sino-US trade war”,the United States pursues expansionism,pragmatism and absolute security;China advocates peace as the most important,good neighborly and friendly relations,inclusiveness and openness.Therefore,“the gesture”of the two countries in trade negotiations is not the same.At last,this thesis summarizes the causes of these differences,aiming to enrich readers'understanding of the“Sino-US trade war”.The author also hopes to deepen the readers'understanding of the semantic features of the attitude resources in the news narrative discourses about“Sino-US trade war”,cultivate the readers'critical thinking,and supplement the vacancy of the narrative study on“Sino-US trade war”.In addition,the thesis is also the further development of the application of news narrative and Appraisal Theory.