| The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic at the end of December 2019 was defined by the World Health Organization as a global public health threat.As the first country to publicly report COVID-19,China has quickly taken various prevention and control measures and achieved remarkable results,while the epidemic situation in Australia is relatively tense.The mainstream media reports of China and Australia have become a focus of conflict.Based on Fairclough’s three dimensional theoretical model,this thesis takes the news reports of the COVID-19 as the research object,and collects 60 news reports between February and July of 2022 from the Sino-Australian mainstream media China Daily and The Australian as the corpus,to perform a critical discourse analysis,aiming to explore the different textual features,discursive strategies and the social factors in the process of the construction of the COVID-19 pandemic in the news reports.Three specific questions are raised in this research.First,what linguistic features are demonstrated in the news reports on the COVID-19 pandemic in China and Australia? Second,what discursive strategies are employed by the news reports in their construction of the COVID-19 pandemic in China and Australia? Third,what social and cultural factors contribute to the news reports’ discursive construction of the COVID-19 pandemic in China and Australia?The study starts from a textual perspective,using Halliday’s systemic functional grammar as a theoretical tool,focusing on analyzing the differences between news texts in terms of transitivity and modality systems,and summarizing the different linguistic strategies of the two countries in constructing their own news discourses.It has been found that China adopts positive discourse strategies when constructing the discourse of the COVID-19,showing a positive image of people centered,solidarity and cooperation,and orderly recovery of life and production;while Australian media is relatively negative in discourse strategies and anti-pandemic strategies,exhibiting the tendency of compromise toward the COVID-19 pandemic,the relatively chaotic situation and the public dissatisfaction toward the government.Secondly,at the discourse level,based on the intertextuality characteristics of discourse,the differences in news sources and reporting modes are analyzed.China Daily has clear news sources and specific sources,with strong objectivity;The Australian on the other hand has a higher proportion of ambiguities and even no sources news than Chinese news reports.Finally,at the social practice level,this study explores the impact of the different situations,institutions and social systems of China and Australia on the discourse construction of the COVID-19 pandemic.China Daily,as the official news media of China,plays a crucial role in reporting China’s policies and expressing China’s standpoints.Although The Australian is one of the most influential national newspapers in Australia,it is affiliated with Murdoch,so views from different perspectives are widely presented in the news reports.Through the critical discourse analysis of news reports on COVID-19,this study expands the application of critical discourse analysis theory in comparing the discourse construction on COVID-19 of different countries,and further expands the feasibility and practicability of critical discourse analysis in analyzing the news reports on COVID-19 pandemic.In addition,this study deepens our understanding of the discursive nature of the COVID-19 pandemic,and helps us to get true and objective news information with critical consciousness.So this study has certain academic value and practical significance. |
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