A Study On The Discourse Construction Of Western Mainstream Media On Chinese Issues

With the rise of China and its approach to the center of the world stage,the expectations of all countries in the world have deepened,and Chinese issues have become the focus of international attention.However,the current global communication pattern is still dominated and centered on the Western discourse system,and for a long time,The discourse construction of some Chinese issues in the Western media is biased.In order to get rid of the lack of discourse power,China urgently needs to explore effective ways to construct foreign discourse to respond to international public opinion.The issue of "Xinjiang cotton" smears the issue of Chinese rights with public opinion actions with obvious ideological colors and economic objectives,which involves many fields and participants,lasts for a long time,and has a large amount of public opinion,causing heated discussions at home and abroad,and has a greater negative impact on China’s image.This study selects the reports of the Guardian,The New York Times,BBC and CNN on the topic of "Xinjiang cotton",combined with the discourse analysis theory of Faircraft and van Dijk,explores how Western mainstream media strengthen the legitimacy of Western countries’behavior and the negativization of China’s image through discourse construction,analyzes the generative logic,communication mechanism and influencing factors of their discourse construction,and provides reference for Chinese media to respond to international public opinion struggles in a more targeted manner and enhance the communication and influence of domestic issues.By establishing a content analysis coding table and analyzing the data,it can be found that Western mainstream media set agendas according to different time stages,enhance public attention to issues,report in a genre of news,cover a wide range of fields and highlight focus,selectively cite multiple sources,focus on shaping and deepening the national action framework and criticism framework,and have a negative impact on China’s national image.At the textual level of reporting discourse,news reports under a single determined thematic framework usually contain multiple levels of macro propositions,infiltrate their ideologies,power relations and cultural attitudes in different levels of logical relationships and meaning combinations,deepen prejudices in the name of rationality and objectivity,and realize the construction of otherness and stereotype.In the micro-discourse structure of the text,through the use of high-frequency words,semantic styles such as preset,detail,and unspoken meaning,as well as rhetorical such as exaggeration,contrast,and metaphor,the deliberate meaning of the discourse is enriched,and the persuasive power and communication effect of the discourse are enhanced.Further exploration of discourse practice and social practice can reveal the interaction between media discourse and social environment.The generation of this discourse is influenced by the comprehensive influence of political logic,economic logic and cultural logic,and forms a chain of discourse dissemination under the linkage of multiple subjects such as the government,media,expert think tanks,and human rights organizations,which is the projection of the sense of decline anxiety and crisis under the hegemonic thinking of the West,and is also the continuation of the Sino-US trade dispute.In view of the characteristics and logic of the construction of reporting discourse,this study provides some suggestions for reference,mainly including:the media actively sets the agenda;strengthening regularity research;Linking multisubject public discourse;Focus on the use of discursive rhetoric;Establish a mechanism for meaning consultation;Explore discourse expressions with Chinese characteristics.