A Comparative Study On Chinese And American English Language News From The Perspective Of Cultural Dimensions Theory

The English language news of China and America are products from the backgrounds of Chinese and American culture.And they have different cultural characteristics.In the cultural context,if Chinese English language news wants to receive the recognition of international audiences,it needs to take cultural factors into consideration.In order to research the impact of cultural factors on English language news,the English language news reports on international events have provided language materials.In November 2018,the Yellow Vest demonstration broke out in France.The cause of the movement was that the French government plans to increase fuel taxes,which aroused dissatisfaction.Relying on social media,the citizens gathered spontaneously to protest and made appeals.Both China Daily and The New York Times reported on the incident.Although the contents of news reports are approximately the same,the significant differences of reporting style have been expressed in these two newspapers.There are of course many factors for the differences,but cultural factors are the most important one.This thesis will mainly explore the cultural differences and the reasons behind them from the cultural dimensions theory.Relying on the four most classic cultural dimensions of Hofstede,this thesis takes the two most representative newspapers in China and America,China Daily and The New York Times,as the research objectives.It aims to examine the cultural differences expressed by the Chinese and American news media when they report on the French Yellow Vests demonstrations in 2018.Two research questions were raised accordingly:(1)What are the cultural differences between China Daily and The New York Times in reporting the French Yellow Vests demonstrations?(2)What are the reasons that affect the cultural differences when China Daily and The New York Times report the French Yellow Vests demonstrations?This thesis uses the methods of exemplification,induction and contrastive analysis,and the results of the research are as follows.On the one hand,obvious differences of cultural orientation have been reflected in the news reports of China Daily and The New York Times.In terms of power distance,China Daily prefers positive news to maintain official authority.The New York Times tends to select general words to highlight the equality among people and downplay the boundaries of them.In terms of individualism and collectivism,China Daily tends to emphasize collective interests from the collectivism standpoint.Moreover,The New York Times places great emphasis on the protection of personal interests.In terms of masculinity and femininity,China Daily is more masculine in the selection of news content and writing style than The New York Times.In terms of uncertainty avoidance,China Daily prefers to use words with anxious meaning.It also emphasizes the status of rules and legislation in society,which is characterized by high uncertainty avoidance.The New York Times has created a more relaxed atmosphere when reporting on the handling of crisis events,which has the characteristics of low uncertainty avoidance.On the other hand,this thesis finds the reasons for these differences can be attributed to the traditional ideology and culture,as well as the cultural misreading appeared in the process of processing information.Exploring the cultural differences between Chinese and American English language news is of great significance for the developing of Chinese English language news.Moreover,the above research results have certain significance for the research of Chinese external communication,which is helpful for international journalists to write English language news.There are consequentially certain limitations since this thesis only takes two newspapers as research objectives.Therefore,the author would expect other scholars to have more in-depth and extensive research on the cultural aspect of English language news in the future.