A Contrastive Study Of Projections In Ecological Discourse Of Chinese And American Media From The Perspective Of Conceptual Blending Theory

Ecological issues have been currently receiving a great deal of attention in the world.Ecological discourse has also become the subject of much academic attention.As a kind of media discourse for the general public,news reports not only convey the truth but also reflect the subjectivity of the media.This is particularly true of projection in the news.In this context,this thesis selects news reports related to ecology for the research on projection.Specifically,this study takes the ecological discourse of the media in China and the United States as the research object.This study obtains a small ecological discourse corpus of 115 reports from 2018 to 2022,which are selected from the news reports on ecology in the mainstream newspapers of the two countries.In addition,by incorporating the social and cognitive elements of the Discourse-Cognition-Society Triangle into Conceptual Blending Network,this study develops a more refined Conceptual Blending Model.Based on this Conceptual Blending Model,the following three questions are the focus of the analysis of the ecological discourse corpus:(1)How do Chinese and American media construct projections in ecological discourse from the perspective of conceptual blending?(2)What are the similarities and differences in the use of projections between the ecological discourse of Chinese and American media?(3)What are the social and socio-cognitive factors that lead to the differences in the use of projections between the ecological discourse of Chinese and American media?This study draws conclusions as follows:(1)From the perspective of conceptual blending,the projections in the ecological discourse corpus can be divided into four types: paratactic projection,hypotactic projection,embedded projection and multilayered projection.In the process of integration,reporters can generate different types of projections by adjusting the amount of cognitive effort and the number of integrations.(2)The comparison shows that a large number of various projections appear in the Chinese and American ecological discourse corpora;however,there are significant differences between the two corpora in the use of hypotactic projections and embedded projections;besides,differences between the corpora are also reflected in the choice of projecting sources,projecting words and projected parts.(3)These differences can be explained in terms of distinctions in linguistic characteristics,thinking modes,attitudinal tendencies and religious beliefs between China and the United States.Based on the above findings,this study verifies the feasibility of combining Conceptual Blending Theory and the Discourse-Cognition-Society Triangle,and confirms projection as an effective discursive strategy.In addition,this study provides some implications for news writers and readers.