Stance in News Discourse: Analysis of Two News Reports in Daily Newspapers in China and the US

Xiaowan YANG

Abstract


The recent Sino-US trade disputes add to the long list of economic and political conflicts between the two largest economies in the world. However, although a trade war is now put on hold with the two countries continuing their negotiations, a different war is fought by major news and business press in both countries to justify the actions taken by each side and gain support from the international community. It therefore becomes a topic of interest as to how the news media make deliberate language choices to influence their readers with their stances and attitudes. This study compares two news reports in daily newspapers in China and the US on a significant trade dispute between China and the US: US imposing safeguard duties on tires from China in 2009. Through Transitivity and Modality analysis, this study aims to demonstrate how news media from rival countries make language choices to help reconstruct events and how different stances and attitudes are implied so as to manipulate the readers to interpret information in an intended way.


Keywords


Stance; News reports; Transitivity; Modality

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/10369

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