A Frame Theory Based Critical Discourse Analysis Of News Reports On COVID-19 In China Daily And The New York Times

Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA),as a new branch of modern linguistics,it develops rapidly and absorbs the results of multidisciplinary research.It aims to reveal relationship between language and ideology by connecting history and social context from the perspective of linguistics.At present,more and more researchers apply cognitive concepts such as metaphor,metonymy,conceptual integration,and categorization to CDA,but there are still relatively few studies on the application of frame theory to CDA.Based on the frame theory,this thesis selects the reports about COVID-19 from China Daily,68reports(48,239 words)and the New York Times,36 reports,(46542 words)as the data,using perspective,event frame,attention window and discourse theme.With the help of comparative analysis of the vocabulary,sentence and text,this thesis attempts to explore the similarities and differences of China Daily and the New York Times on the report of COVID-19.Then,it tries to find the way of China Daily and the New York Times to convey voices and realize dynamic communication.The purpose is to answer the following questions:(1)At the lexical level,what is the vocabulary selection of China Daily and the New York Times reports on COVID-19? What are the similarities and differences?(2)At the sentential level,what is the description of the event frame in China Daily and the New York Times reports on COVID-19? What are the similarities and differences?(3)At the textual level,what is the theme construction of China Daily and the New York Times reports on COVID-19? What are the similarities and differences?At the lexical level,the thesis finds that China Daily prefers to use positive vocabulary,to build a fighter image which Chinese people and the government fight the epidemic actively,such as improve,strengthen,handle,cooperate;the New York Times uses descriptive and evaluative negative words to describe the epidemic,such as mismanage,slow,underestimate,cover up.It tries to portray the Chinese people as victims of this epidemic,and highlight the irresponsibility and inaction of Chinese government.At the sentential level,both China Daily and the New York Times initiate the behavior of the Chinese government as the agent,but the focus of attention window is different.China Daily concerns about the Chinese government’s efforts deal with the epidemic,and then achieve good results as the causal event frame;while the New York Times concerns about Chinese government who understates the epidemic and then Chinese people are affected by the virus.In terms of the theme in these news reports,China Daily constructs active frames as war,disease,unity,and a community of shared destiny to establish China’s image as a responsible country;the New York Times constructs negative thematic frames to highlight the image of Chinese government to shirk responsibility,control speech,and threaten people’s lives,dissatisfaction and complaints as the slow-action giant.This thesis aims to analyze news discourses by applying Cognitive Linguistics to CDA.Under the analysis of news discourses about public health emergencies,it attempts to help readers to understand news reports and the implied ideological issues better,strengthen critical thinking,and then read news reports more objectively and comprehensively.