Discourse Construction Of Chinese And American Media Reports On China’s COVID-19 Vaccine Assistance

During the pandemic,China’s COVID-19 vaccine assistance helped build a community with a shared future for mankind.According to 2021 statistics,more than 80 countries have received COVID-19 vaccines from China.Reports on China’s vaccine assistance have become hot topics pursued by media around the world.However,American media,represented by New York Times,slandered China’s foreign vaccine assistance.Therefore,a comparative analysis of Chinese and American media reports on COVID-19 vaccine assistance can help us understand the ideology of the media on both sides and improve the ability to discern the hidden meaning of the discourse.At the same time,it helps establish a positive image in the international community and win respect and support from other countries.In view of this,this paper from the perspective of critical discourse analysis,takes Fairclough’s three-dimensional analysis framework and Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics as the theoretical framework.By means of combining corpus analysis,this paper compares and analyzes the similarities and differences between news reports of China Daily and New York Times on China’s COVID-19 vaccine assistance from the three dimensions: text dimension,discourse practice dimension,and social practice dimension,to explore the ideological reasons behind these differences.This study aims to answer three questions:(1)what are the differences between China Daily and New York Times in the stage of text description,discourse practice interpretation,and social practice interpretation?(2)What is the author’s attitude of China Daily and New York Times on the COVID-19 vaccine report?(3)What are the reasons for the ideological disagreement between the two sides?To answer the above questions,this study takes the report of China Vaccine by the China Daily and New York Times as a research object.It collected a total of 24 news reports,then downloaded these reports to build a corpus of COVID-19 vaccine assistance.In the text description stage,with the help of Antconc corpus software,this paper compares and analyzes the high-frequency words,cohesive and collocation,and transitivity of China Daily and New York Times corpus.It is found that China Daily takes a positive attitude towards China’s vaccine efficacy,aiming to show the world that China’s vaccine assistance is to save lives,not to compete with Western countries,while New York Times,from the standpoint of American hegemonism,blurred the focus of its report,trying to shift the domestic contradiction due to poor performance in anti-epidemic period.In the stage of discourse practice interpretation,comparing the reporting modes and reporting sources of China Daily and New York Times,these two media both maintain objectivity and diversity.However,it can be seen after analyzing that the reporters of New York Times,when quoting specific sources and direct and indirect discourse,attempted to implant their own attitude and stance trying to influence readers’ judgments,thereby building an unreliable image of China.Finally,this study explains the reasons for the difference between China Daily and New York Times in terms of political,economic and institutional factors.This research enriches the scope of deconstructing news reports from critical discourse analysis,which helps to improve the sensitivity of news discourse and the ability to build global discourse right.