Comparative Analysis Of Attitude Resources In News Peports On The Belt And Road Initiative

The Belt and Road initiative is currently a state-level top strategy of China,which has aroused great repercussions in the international community since it was proposed.Mass media at home and abroad have released a lot of reports on this hot event,and many scholars have also made researches on it.Previous studies have mostly analyzed the Belt and Road news reports in all newspapers in certain country,but there is hardly any comparative studies among the three kinds of newspapers.Thereafter,this study respectively collects 25 pieces of news reports on the Belt and Road initiative from 2017 to 2019 from the mainstream newspapers—the Britain’s The Guardian,the United States’ The New York Times and China’s China Daily,and it compares the attitude resources in the Belt and Road initiative news reports in thesethree kinds of newspapers,aiming to probe into the following three questions:(1)What is the distribution of attitude resources in the three newspapers?(2)What are the similarities and differences in the distributive characteristics of attitude resources in these three newspapers?(3)What are the causes for the distribution of attitude resources in the news reports?In order to work out the above research questions,this study mainly selects the method of comparative discourse analysis to analyze the application of the attitude resources in the Belt and Road news reports,and then makes a comparative analysis of the attitude resources in three newspapers.The research results are as follows:(1)In the news reports in The Guardian,affect resources account for 37.69%,judgment resources take up 23.65%and appreciation resources measure up 38.66%;In the news reports in The New York Times,affect resources account for 34.94%,judgement resources 30.62%and appreciation resources 34.44%.The three subsystems resources in China Daily account for 10.65%,37.77%and 51.58%respectively.(2)There are similarities and differences in the distribution of attitude resources among the three newspapers.The similarities are as follows:in terms of the overall distribution of attitude resources,attitude resources are all abundant in the three newspapers on the Belt and Road initiative news reports.Judgement resources all rank second in the three newspapers.Whereas,the main differences are:in the distribution of attitude resources in the news reports in The Guardian,the proportion of distribution of appreciation resources(38.66%)is slightly higher than that of affection resources(37.69%),while the proportion of judgment resources is the least(23.65%).In The New York Times,affect,judgment and appreciation resources are evenly distributed to some extent,with affect resources(34.94%)accounting for the most,appreciation resources(34.44%)the second,and judgment resources(30.62%)the least.The news reports in China Daily show the greatest difference in the distribution of attitude resources,with the lowest proportion of affect resources(10.65%),the highest proportion of appreciation resources(51.58%)and the middle proportion of judgment resources(37.77%).As for the positive and negative distribution of attitude resources,they present the most striking difference:The Guardian and The New York Times mostly employ negative attitude resources in news reports,but China Daily takes full advantage of positive attitude resources.Taking affect resources for example,the distribution of negative affect resources in The Guardian(77.04%)and The New York Times(80.00%)are far beyond negative affect resources in China Daily(21.43%).(3)The differences behind the distribution of attitudes resources are closely related to the international situation.The Guardian holds the conservative and cautious attitude towards the Belt and Road initiative because of Britain’s complex and changeable domestic and international environment.Despite many doubts and fearing that the initiative is a Chinese Marshall plan,it is still attracted by the huge potential and bright prospects of the Belt and Road and hopes to benefit from the initiative,but is afraid of taking risks.The New York Times has always held a negative attitude towards the Belt and Road initiative.Relying on its status and influence,America dares to make any comments or even interfere with other countries to join the Belt and Road initiative,which fully embodies its concern that the Belt and Road will affect the development of the United States and even threaten its influence in the world.The English edition of China Daily is China’s window to the world.Currently,China is undergoing a positive upward momentum of development.The positive reports on the Belt and Road is beneficial to build a good image of a major country,strive for more countries to join in the initiative and to achieve common development and prosperity.News reports are supposed to be objective and rational,but the ideology and the attitude and position of the media are hidden behind the superficial rationality.When reading news reports,readers should take critical thinking and attitude,focus on the use of attitude resources and distinguish the voice behind news reports.