A Study On News Discourse Related To Chinese Tourists In Fiji Newspaper

As the Belt and Road Initiative is advancing,it is increasingly important to understand Fiji’s attitude towards Chinese tourists and the Chinese tourism market for bilateral economic,trade and tourism cooperation.Through Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA),the real social consciousness behind discourse can be explored.At present,researches on CDA mostly focus on the media of China,Russia,the United States,the United Kingdom and other economically developed countries.For the news media in underdeveloped regions,especially for the Pacific Island countries with generally backward economic development level,there is not enough attention to discourse research.Fairclough’s discourse theory is mostly used in current affairs news,financial news and entertainment news,but no scholar has applied it to the discourse research of tourism news.Based on Fairclough’s discourse theory,this study conducts CDA on Chinese tourist themed news from three dimensions,taking the Chinese tourist themed news texts of Fiji Times and Fiji Sun as the research object.By collecting the news texts of Fiji Times and Fiji Sun from January 2008 to October 2021,and using content analysis and CDA,the characteristics and social background factors of news discourse are discussed.The results show that:(1)There is a significant positive correlation between the number of Chinese tourist-related stories in Fiji times and Fiji sun and the cooperation in tourism affairs between China and Fiji;(2)News reports mainly focus on the theme of ’Fiji government and tourism enterprises pay attention to and attach importance to the Chinese tourist market’;(3)Reports on Chinese tourists in the Fiji Times and The Fiji Sun are generally objective and fair,without negative or negative reports.Fiji Sun was more positive than The Fiji Times.There are a few reports showing a neutral attitude due to the concern about the impact of China-Fiji tourism cooperation on the interests of Fiji’s local industry.(4)And there are three main reasons for the formation of the characteristics of newspaper discourse:The long-term political mutual trust,economic mutual benefit and cultural exchange between China and Fiji;The positive development of bilateral relations under the background of ’One Belt and One Road’ cooperation and the Fiji’s‘Look North Policy’.From the perspective of linguistics,this paper uses Fairclough discourse theory to explore and analyze the news discourses related to Chinese tourists in Fiji Times and Fiji Sun,summarize the discourse characteristics,and explore the social background factors that affect the discourse.This paper expands the application scope and research perspective of Fairclough’s discourse theory.This is the first time that Fiji newspapers have been selected as the research object,providing a basis for China to understand the real attitude of Fiji media.Based on the research conclusions,this paper proposes suggestions to improve the media image of Chinese tourists from the perspective of media communication:optimize tourism communication strategy,use international social media to tell good stories with emotion;Improving the way news is expressed and developing local reports;Master external communication skills,cooperate with local media,attach importance to community communication.