Discourse Analysis Of China Space Reporting In The US Mainstream Media

From the start of China manned space project in 1992 to the successful launch of the"Shenzhou 15" spacecraft now,China’s development in the space field has achieved fruitful results,amazed the world and made the nation proud.China is steadily embarking on a journey to become a space power in the new era.As the largest developed country in the world,the United States has close ties with China,and the relationship between China and the US has an important influence on the international situation.As an important part of Western discourse production,the American media enjoys a high voice and influence in international communication.How they view and evaluate the development of China’s aerospace industry will influence the perception and evaluation of China’s image by the entire international community.This paper selects 172 reports involving the "Shenzhou" series from the New York Times,USA Today,and CNN as research subjects.Aims to use Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis theory and methods combined with the qualitative analysis software NVivo 11 discussing the three dimensions of text,discourse practice,and social and cultural practice,and revealing the ideology and power attribution hidden in the discourse of American media reports.Based on the research,the following conclusions are drawn:(1)At the text level,by analyzing the classification and use of vocabulary,it is discovered that there has over wording phenomenon in the news reports;In terms of the use of metaphors,war metaphors are the type of metaphor used the most in American media.By using many war metaphors,such as "cede space","great victory" and "public relations coup",China is portrayed as a country of social military domination to achieve the development of the space industry.In addition to war metaphors,common language metaphors are also frequently used.For example,by using idiomatic terms such as "Cultural Revolution" and "Great Leap",the perspective is directly directed to a specific period of Chinese history,while in the Western world,these two terms point to a negative image of China;In terms of transitivity,the American media uses material processes and relational processes the most.Through the use of transitivity,China has been portrayed as an imitator of Western technology,a threat to the space sector,and a heavily regulated controller.(2)As to discourse practice,this paper considers the intertextuality of news reports from the two aspects of citation analysis and pre-set analysis.Judging from the citation analysis,mainstream American media questioned the rationality of China’s vigorous development of manned space projects by quoting "some Chinese","an editor who asked not to be named","some people waving flags" and "some netizen".At the same time,through the use of paraphrasing verbs,positive verbs are mostly used to cite reports from authoritative Chinese media,statements of government officials,and opinions of American scholars.However,negative and divisive verbs are mostly used to paraphrase the words of ordinary Chinese people and vague sources of information,use the identity of these subjects to question the development of China aerospace industry,covertly spread media ideology,and achieve the goal of discrediting China by this means.Judging from pre-set analysis,the American media created a "language trap" by setting semantic presets,and covertly outputting media values to mislead the audience in accepting information and making factual judgments.(3)At the social and cultural level,this paper explores the causes in three aspects:the dispute over national interests between China and the US,the American media system,and the perception of China by American society.It was discovered that the production of statements reported by mainstream American media on China manned space project is inseparable from changes in the political and economic relations between the two countries,and national interests have always played a key role in this.At the same time,America’s highly commercialized and specialized "liberal model" media system makes it vulnerable to all kinds of social capital,and is highly confident in its own system,which in turn produces biased discourse against other countries from the standpoint of its values.Furthermore,in recent decades,American society’s biased perception of China has made it easy for the American media to be influenced by "cultural unconsciousness" in such a social atmosphere,and social perceptions subtly influence their ideology and value positions.