A Corpus-Based Analysis Of COVID-19-Related Reports In People’s Daily And CNN From The Perspective Of Force Dynamics

This thesis compares and contrasts the representation of different force-dynamic patterns in COVID-19-related reports from the beginning of 2020 to the beginning of 2022 between People’s Daily and CNN based on the force dynamics(FD)theory put forth by Talmy(2000a:Chap.7),including the role assignment of humans and COVID19,the relative strengths between them,and the selection of force-dynamic patterns.Two questions are to be answered:1)What are the similarities and differences between the images of humans and COVID-19 depicted in People’s Daily and CNN?2)What are the features of the representation of force-dynamic patterns in People’s Daily and CNN?Taking online reports as the data sources,this thesis employs Web Crawler to build the corpora,and Sketch Engine to extract force expressions with COVID-19 as the subjects or objects with keywords of "COVID-19" and "新冠"(xinguan COVID-19).A total of 2,236 sentences describing the force interactions between humans and COVID-19 were extracted,of which 1,062 are from People’s Daily and 1,174 from CNN.The major findings are as follows:(1)Both People’s Daily and CNN tend to assign the role of Ants to human beings,force expressions with humans as the Ants accounting for 98.28%in People’s Daily and 65.73%in CNN;however,there is a significant difference in the role assignment of COVID-19 between People’s Daily and CNN:force expressions with COVID-19 as the Ants taking up 34.27%in CNN and the percentage is 1.72%in People’s Daily.(2)People’s Daily portrays a powerful human image,i.e.,a force-exerting entity that successfully impedes the tendency of COVID-19;CNN presents a forceful image of COVID-19 that successfully interrupts various human social activities and even takes human lives.In People’s Daily,force expressions portraying the power of humans take up 88%,while those describing the force of COVID-19 account for 57.94%in CNN.(3)In terms of the representation of force-dynamic patterns,People’s Daily and CNN are similar in the following aspects:1)Both of them frequently represent the "Onset causing of rest"(Pf):27.24%and 43.02%of it in People’s Daily and CNN,respectively;2)Neither of them represents"Extended causing of action"(Pa),"Onset letting of action"(Pg),"Onset letting of rest"(Ph),and "Extended letting of rest"(Pj);3)Both of them portray patterns illustrating other force relations between humans and COVID-19,including force-dynamic patterns of "Confronting","Weakening","Helping" and "Rebounding"(4)In terms of the representation of force-dynamic patterns,People’s Daily and CNN differ in the following aspects:1)They attach different degrees of attention to those force-dynamic patterns:People’s Daily focuses on those patterns that contribute to depicting a powerful image of humans,including "Onset causing of rest"(Pf),"Extended causing of rest"(Pd),and"Overcome"(Pk),while CNN emphasizes those that portray a forceful image of COVID-19,including "Onset causing of rest"(Pf),"Onset causing of action"(Pe);2)In the representation of(Pf),CNN focuses on the disruptions caused by COVID-19,while People’s Daily emphasizes how humans control COVID-19:force expressions with COVID-19 as the Ants accounting for 55.53%in CNN,and those with humans as the Ants taking up 94.14%in People’s Daily;3)"Overcome"(Pk)is repeatedly depicted in People’s Daily in 244 force expressions,reflecting the optimism and the belief that humans will overcome COVID-19,while this pattern is less frequently represented in CNN in merely 24 force expressions.These similarities and differences are explained in terms of intrinsic tendencies,thinking modes,value orientations and anti-epidemic policies.The above findings establish the fact that People’s Daily and CNN portray different images of humans and COVID-19:the former tends to portray a powerful human image and a controllable image of COVID-19,and the latter opts to portray COVID-19 as an uncontrollable factor that has a significant impact on people’s lives.This study examines how images of people and COVID-19 are constructed in different media from the perspective of linguistics and the potential factors behind them,which is instructive for studies on media language.