A Comparative Study Of Environmental News Reports Between China And Uk Based On Ecolinguistic Theory

With the vigorous development of ecolinguistics,some scholars have conducted researches on environmental news from the perspective of ecolinguistics,but there are few comparative studies on Chinese and English environmental news,and there is still a large research space.This research selects 40 and 43 reports on environmental news from China Daily and The Times respectively.Taking Stibbe’s “Living!” ecosophy as the research basis,this research retrieves nominalization and passive voice with the help of Ant Conc,uses UAM Corpus Tool to annotate transitivity and analyzes news pictures manually.Combining qualitative and quantitative research methods,this research aims to study the distribution characteristics of erasure and salience in China Daily and The Times,as well as the reasons for the similarities and differences in the distribution characteristics.It is found that in the process of telling environmental stories,there are similarities and differences in linguistic features between Chinese and English environmental news reports.Regarding similarities,both sides use strong erasure in nominalization,delete different types of agents in passive sentences,and tend to use material process clauses in transitivity.In terms of nominalization and deletion of the actor in passive sentences,reporters hide the actor intentionally or unintentionally to divert people’s attention.In transitivity,both sides record what happened,the causes and the effects through a large number of material process clauses,so as to illustrate the positive actions of the two countries in environmental protection and governance.Under the influence of culture,environmental policy and ecosophy,the distribution of participants and the use of news pictures in Chinese and English environmental news are different.As far as the role of participants is concerned,China Daily uses more inanimate participants as clause subjects than The Times,which shows that the reporters are concerned about the overall environmental issues and hold the non anthropocentric view of ecological civilization construction.In terms of the use of news pictures,China Daily uses more environmental news pictures,covering environmental phenomena,the causes of environmental problems,and the measures of dealing with environmental problems,while the use of pictures in The Times mainly reflects environmental phenomena and measures.Compared with The Times,diversified news pictures are more conducive to direct interaction with readers in China Daily,stimulating readers’ enthusiasm for environmental protection.From the perspective of ecolinguistics,this research analyzes environmental news reports in the mainstream media of China and the UK,hoping to give some inspiration to the future research.