| Caused by rising emissions of carbon dioxide,global warming has been in the spotlight in recent years.The responses of different countries to this growing threat have attracted media’s attention.In this context,it is necessary to explore the relationship among media languages,social contexts,and national images in environmental news discourse from a linguistic perspective.China Daily is one of the most influential Chinese international newspapers.Its carbon emission reduction coverage focusing on climate change issues or carbon emission reduction was diversified.Therefore,this thesis selected samples of carbon emission reduction news from China Daily for analysis.Combining van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach with Ruth Wodak’s discourse-historical approach,this research analyzed eighteen news articles on carbon emission reduction on China Daily.This study interpreted sample news from three perspectives: themes,structures,and reporting strategies.The findings of this research are as follows.Firstly,carbon emission reduction news in China Daily focuses on four themes: 1)various global attitudes regarding carbon emission reduction governance,2)countries with different circumstances,3)compliments from foreign countries for China’s carbon emission reduction efforts,and 4)actions on environmental cooperation.Secondly,in terms of news structure,the sample news was presented to be cyclical in installment from the superstructure perspective,which uses the same elements at a different place in the text to deliver the argument hierarchically.Clauses were preferred in the headline structure of sample news from the macrostructure perspective,which can facilitate readers’ understanding of the news event.China Daily applied more declarative categories from the microscopic perspective,which may indicate that China Daily has been more discursive in recent years.Thirdly,from the perspective of discursive strategies,aggregation,liberal use of quotations,and explicit presentation were applied in sample news,reporting carbon reduction events from a Chinese perspective,which presented a positive image of China.This thesis confirmed the existence of inequality and inter-group confrontation in the international community,which reflects the imbalanced discursive power among countries and the antagonistic phenomena.This study observed China Daily reports carbon emission reduction issues from a Chinese perspective and Core Socialist Values of harmony,equality,and friendship in news samples.This research points out that China’s international media could provide more background information or deep-seated reasons when portraying China’s pursuit of a shared future for mankind to improve readers’ acceptance of Chinese international media and increase media’s discursive power and persuasive power.By selecting environmental news samples in the Chinese international press,this thesis extends the range of subject texts for critical discourse analysis and provides topic selecting suggestions for future linguistic research.Besides,this thesis analyzed texts with two critical discourse research approaches,which provided alternative ideas for future linguistic research selecting discourse analysis research methods,as well as future research on international communication and environmental news. |
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