A Contrastive Analysis Of Chinese And American Mainstream Reports On The South China Sea Issue From The Perspective Of Proximization Theory

The famous linguist of Poland,Piotr Cap has put forward proximization theory to explain construal mechanism of discourse and reveal the ideology hidden in the discourse.Proximization theory has explained how speaker or writer constructs the proximity of peripheral entities towards central entities in the discourse space so as to achieve legitimization of actions and policy of central entities.Spatial proximization means the construal of the proximity of peripheral entities towards central entities in the spatial aspect.Temporal proximization means that the impact of peripheral entities’ past actions has extended from the past to the present and will exist between the present and the future.This proximity is a conception of temporal shift including “past to present” shift and “future to present” shift.Axiological proximization means that there exists apparent contradiction between values of peripheral entities and values of central entities.This contradiction may materialize in the space of central entities and generate great impact to central entities.China has sufficient historical and legal basis to enjoy the sovereignty of the South China Sea.Nevertheless,in order to suppress the development of China and maintain its hegemony,the US has constantly spread China Threat Theory in the South China Sea region.This behavior has sabotaged the efforts of China and other regional countries to resolve the South China Sea issue through dialogue,negotiation and cooperation.News report is the critical tool of the US to manipulate international public opinion and smear China.Meanwhile,China actively airs its opinion through official international media to maintain its interests.In order to explore the ideology hidden in the news reports about the South China Sea issue of Chinese and American mainstream media.With “the South China Sea” as key word,25 and 24 relevant news reports have been selected from the official websites of the Chinese media CGTN and the American media VOA respectively.There are 12,104 words in CGTN reports and 12,170 words in VOA reports.Then two small contrastive corpora have been constructed.According to specific semantic context,key lexico-grammatical items involved in proximization theory have been annotated and counted through UAM Corpus Tool 3.3x.Based on proximization theory,the analysis of CGTN reports and VOA reports on the South China Sea issue was conducted to try to answer the following questions:(1)What are the similarities and distinctions of spatial proximization between CGTN reports and VOA reports on the SCS issue?(2)What are the similarities and distinctions of temporal proximization between CGTN reports and VOA reports on the SCS issue?(3)What are the similarities and distinctions of axiological proximization between CGTN reports and VOA reports on the SCS issue?(4)What are the proximization models constructed respectively in CGTN reports and VOA reports on the SCS issue to realize their discourse stance?Through the contrastive analysis of proximization dimensions in CGTN reports and VOA reports about the South China Sea issue,some findings are summarized as follows:Firstly,in the aspect of spatial proximization,both CGTN and VOA incorporate the country they represent respectively and other regional countries in their own camp.Both treat the other side as the enemy camp.This enlarges their own camp and narrows the other side’s camp,embodying the legitimacy of their own camp and illegitimacy of the other side’s camp.Both CGTN and VOA show the constant proximity of the other side towards central entities to some extent through verb phrases of motion and directionality,verb phrases of action,noun phrases of anticipations.And this will bring some bad effects.But CGTN has employed more noun phrases of actual effect to show negative impacts the US has brought to China and other regional countries.Secondly,in the aspect of temporal proximization,both CGTN and VOA believe that the impact of the other side’s country has extended from the past to the present and will exist between the present and the future.The difference is that VOA has employed more nominalizaions,modal auxiliaries to emphasize that China’s impact will exist between the present and the future.CGTN has employed more parallel contrastive discourse forms to reveal that the US actions will bring negative effects in the future.Thirdly,in the aspect of axiological proximization,CGTN has employed more positive values of China and more negative values of the US to prove legitimacy of China and illegitimacy of the US.In contrast,VOA has employed less positive values and negative values to show the US stance.Finally,in the aspect of proximization model,both CGTN and VOA have constructed a three-dimensional discourse space including spatial axis,temporal axis,and axiological axis to show the proximity of the other side’s threat from these three dimensions.But the preference of these three dimensions is different in CGTN and VOA reports.The preference of CGTN is spatial > axiological > temporal(SAT),while the preference of VOA is spatial >temporal > axiological(STA).So,Proximization model constructed in CGTN is Spatial-Axiological-Temporal proximization model(SAT model)while proximization model constructed in VOA is Spatial-Temporal-Axiological proximization model(STA model).The research complies with the trend of critical cognitive discourse analysis,broadens application scope of proximization theory,and strengthens people’s cognition to the news reports of Chinese and American mainstream media about the South China Sea issue.