A Contrastive Analysis Of News Discourse Construction Of Sino-US Trade Frictions From The Perspective Of Proximization Theory

As the latest explanatory power of Critical Discourse Analysis,Proxmization Theory(PT)focuses on the confrontation between inside-the-deictic-center(IDCs)and outside-the-deictic-center(ODCs)in a given Discourse Space(DS),emphasizes threat construals in the prximization process,thus has been gradually applied to news discourse analysis by scholars home and abroad in recent years.News discourse is supposed to be impartial and unbiased,but always somewhat intertwined with reporters’ values and ideologies.Given that,this thesis,under the guidance of PT,conducts a diachronic study of news reports selected from China Daily and the New York Times about Sino-US trade frictions in a three-period(friction in the primary,escalating and temporarily easing period).With the help of Ant Conc corpus tool to retrieve lexical-grammatical forms,a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods aims to make a contrastive analysis of the distributions,similarities and differences as well as causes for proximization strategies employed in Chinese and American news DS constructed by Sino-US trade frictions,thus giving in-depth revealing of stance and ideologies embedded in language practice throughout the selected three periods.It is found that: Firstly,at the macro level,in light of the three-period taken as a whole,both China and the US have the highest share in the spatial proximization in a similar representation;but the difference lies in the axiological proximization ranks only second to the spatial proximization in Chinese news discourses,the temporal proximization has captured more than the axiological proximization in American news discourses;key lexical-grammatical items to realize every proximization strategy has shown significant differences.At the micro level,in the spatial proximization,China significantly displays the ODCs makers’ aggressive and threatening behaviors in the second period;while the US highlights irrationality of Chinese behaviors in the first and third periods,pointing arrows at China for its unfair trades.In the temporal proximization,China stresses the long-term impact of trade frictions actively seeking solutions in the first and second periods.In the third period,China remains firmly committed to its own interests against threats caused by friction in the future.However,the US accuses China of past illegal use of intellectual property rights and technology transfer in the first period,underlines the threat of trade frictions encroaching on as a legal pretext for imposing tariffs back and fill in the second and third periods.In the axiological proximization,China has always adopted active strategies to shape a positive national image throughout the three periods;the US has adopted negative values to fabricate facts at the coercion-legitimization level.Secondly,based on the analytic results above mentioned,the STA models have been drawn on in light of the change trends in both Chinese and American news DS.China is construed as an assertive image with high sense of responsibility constructed by Chinese news DS.The US is construed as one imputing responsibility to others at the coercion-ligitimization level.It has been a further evidence that news discourse is not with objectiveness all but with ideology somewhat.Thirdly,causes for similarities and differences of proximization strategies in both news DS are concluded.First,newspaper’s objectiveness,fairness determine few indefinite descriptions in the temporal proximization,going with relative numbers of modal verbs in American news discourses to represent the temporal proximization.Furthermore,respective institutional camps affiliated to China and the US feature IDC-ODC entities in opposition represented by the highest proportion of personal pronouns and nationalized nouns in the spatial proximization.At last,different cultural ethics have formed conflicts between Chinese and American values,resulting in differences of both countries’ diverse representations of the axiological proximization.Accordingly,it is hoped that this thesis can have a small part to play in proximization strategies of news discourse analysis so as to improve readers’ dialectical reading awareness and sensitivity of intentions behind language practice,thus further inspiring journalists to cover dispassionately.