A Study Of The Chinese Discourse Construction Based On The News Reports On The Belt And Road In China Daily

The Belt and Road Initiative（abbreviated as One Belt One Road or B&R）has attracted global attention since its proposal.Under this circumstance,the Chinese media shoulders the important task of how to‘tell the Chinese story well’and construct the Chinese discourse system of B&R along the way.At present,there is still a scant of domestic and foreign research on the construction of China’s foreign-oriented publicity discourse based on Chinese mainstream media reports,especially for financial English news.This paper selected the reports on the One Belt One Road Initiative in China Daily（hereinafter CD）to conduct qualitative and quantitative discourse research.CD is one of the mainstream English newspapers in China and has become an important window and bridge for the world to understand China.The present study has built a corpus based on the 1,609 news reports in CD about the B&R from2015 to 2020,and draws on Van Dijk’s news as discourse theory as the theoretical basis.It adopts a Chinese discourse construction framework combined with corpus analysis to conduct qualitative and quantitative research,aiming to investigate how the newspaper has produced and reproduced Chinese discourse and China’s image.Specifically,this thesis aims to answer questions concerning the content of the discourse（what has been reported about the B&R in the news）,the subject of the discourse（who have been the sources of opinions in the news）,and the rhetoric style of discourse（what conceptual metaphors have been adopted in the news）in the reports.This study used the official document Visions and Actions for Promoting the Joint Construction of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21^stCentury Maritime Silk Road,jointly issued by the National Development and Reform Commission of China and other departments on March 28,2015,as the starting point for corpus collection.The B&R news corpus covered the following six years until March 28,2020.It can be divided into three sub-corpora based on the time node of the 1^stand2^ndBelt and Road International Cooperation Summit Forum.Through data analysis,three major findings are set out as follows:1.As for discourse contents,first of all,there is no significant difference in the number of reports between the first two corpora,while the last one has a relatively small number of reports due to the shorter period of time.According to the number of monthly reports on important events of the B&R,CD paid much more attention to the“1^st B&R International Cooperation Summit Forum”than the“official joint construction initiative”and the“2^nd B&R International Cooperation Summit Forum”.The three sub-corpora all showed special focus on the“achievement”and“countries and regions”reports of the B&R.The reports on the“special policies and projects are signed by B&R”showed a gradual upward trend,and there was less attention paid to news reports on the“government department and officials”.In Sub-corpora 1 and 2,CD focused on the“achievement”and“countries and regions”reports.In Sub-corpus 3,the amount of“special policies and projects are signed by B&R”reports rose significantly and the topic became the focus of news reports during that period.Moreover,the keywords of“countries and regions”show that in different periods,the news reports of the B&R have the different focus on the countries and regions participating in the B&R.This result is in full consistence with China’s development goal of“going deep into the western region of China,forming an all-round opening-up pattern,and achieving balanced and coordinated development between the east and the west”.Third,from the changing trend of Mongolia,Myanmar,Pakistan and others,it can be seen that China’s foreign-oriented publicity discourse does not give enough coverage to the six economic corridors proposed by China.As important regions of the B&R,Hong Kong,and the“New Eurasian Continental Bridge”have been insufficiently reported.2.From the perspective of sources of opinions,first,domestic sources are mainly concentrated on the Chinese government,experts and scholars,and financial institutions.Overseas sources are also largely confined to the above three types of sources as the main sources,while institutional organizations and public discourse sources have more advantages in quantity compared with domestic ones.Second,the diversified distribution of domestic sources is not obvious,especially between domestic institutions and news media sources.Third,in general,although the sources were mainly concentrated on the government,experts and scholars in the past six years,after the first forum of B&R,overseas sources,except for news media,showed a trend of even distribution.However,domestic reports keep the government,experts and scholars,and financial institutions as the main sources of discourse.3.As for discourse forms,first,CD utilizes conceptually the metaphor of ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IS A JOURNEY to describe the process of building B&R and the efforts made by various countries.Through the analysis of the conceptual metaphor of BELT AND ROAD COUNTRIES ARE HUMAN BEINGS,CD is more likely to choose a kind of discourse strategy that can help the countries of the world feel more unified.It also conveyed the positive and solid image of the B&R by using the conceptual metaphor of ACHIEVEMENT OF THE BELT AND ROAD COOPERATION IS A BUILDING.Second,before the first forum of B&R,CD tended to describe the purpose and vision of B&R.After the first forum of B&R,the number of achievements-related conceptual metaphor was increasing and the form of discourse became more diversified.After the second forum,CD focused on those three conceptual metaphors as the major conceptual metaphor to describe B&R’s friendly attitude towards the world and demonstrate China’s role in this initiative and the responses to external skepticism.Based on the above findings,this paper concludes that from 2015 to 2020,CD’s news reports on the B&R,while constructing a Chinese discourse system for the B&R,reflected national policies,responded to external skepticism,and demonstrated Chinese wisdom promptly.In general,the researcher hopes that the research methods and results of this paper can shed some light on future empirical research and the construction of Chinese discourse.Based on the huge amount of news data on the B&R,it is recommended that future research include more news reports in a longer period to make the research more comprehensive.