A Diachronic Comparative Study Of Chinese Teenagers’ Images Based On Chinese Foreign Media Discourse

Adolescence is the most active and critical period for identity construction and development in everyone’s life stage.However,on account of being affected by age and life experience at this stage,teenagers are facing the crisis of identity.As we all know that their healthy body and mind and comprehensive quality are related to the future of country and their international image is a significant component of the national image.Therefore,teenagers need to examine their own values and beliefs all along,recognizing and enhancing their identity from a global perspective under the new circumstances so as to play a major role in building a better national image.All the time social development exerts a great influence on teenagers.Since the 18 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China,China has scored tremendous achievements in politics,economy and other fields,which provide a fertile development environment for Chinese teenagers’ growth.So,before and after the18 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China,which is an important time node in China’s development,what international images do Chinese teenagers have in the two periods? Have the images changed with the social development? If so,what are the differences and similarities for the international images in the two periods?In the information age,the media image links the objective existence and subjective cognition together and becomes an important channel to understand the world and observe things.Therefore,in order to solve the above questions,the thesis selects the English version of China Daily and Global Times which are predominant in China’s foreign propaganda media as an important channel to understand the international image of Chinese teenagers and determines the two time stages for comparison of the images in 2005-2012 and 2013-2020.At the same time,the thesis puts the qualitative and quantitative methods together in the research process and uses the cumulative effect of language in the corpus to provide objective linguistic evidences for the accuracy of the result in this research.In the thesis,firstly,by using the interpersonal epithet,the international images of Chinese teenagers in the two stages are preliminarily outlined.Then the transitivity system is taken as the theoretical framework and in the light of its principle,that is,who did what to whom,the specific international images of Chinese teenagers in 2005-2012 and 2013-2020 are explored respectively when they act as active and passive participants respectively.Finally,the thesis makes a comparison for them to find similarities and differences in the international images of Chinese teenagers in 2005-2012 and 2013-2020 and explains the results.By analyzing the clauses in the corpus,it is found that there are similarities and differences in the international images of Chinese teenagers in 2005-2012 and2013-2020.The similarities lie in that when Chinese teenagers play the role of active participants,they are selfless givers to society in China and rebels who resist the world through various bad behaviors;while acting as passive participants,they are protected by various social groups in China and are punished mainly by Chinese law-enforcing departments for participating in crimes.The differences between them are that in 2013-2020,as active participants,they are people who have a higher sense of social responsibility to be a better master of the country with more chance for their voice to be heard to serve the Chinese society and build the country.However,the rebellious ways to deal with the rules and order from the outside world are becoming increasingly diversified;when playing the role of passive participants,they receive more perfect methods of protection with the development of Chinese society,and in the meantime,there are decreasing groups to punish them.