美国媒体南海争端新闻报道中的中国国家形象建构——基于语料库的语义韵研究 Discursive Construction of China’s Image in the US’s Media Reporting of the South China Sea Disputes—A Corpus-Based Semantic Prosody Study
随着中国综合国力的提升,西方媒体大肆渲染“中国威胁论”、“中国责任论”,直接影响中国国家形象在全球的塑造和传播。本研究以美国主流媒体关于南海争端的新闻报道为语料,利用语料库语言学研究方法,基于扩展意义单位模型,分析语料库中China的搭配词如“claim, action, dispute”的语义倾向和呈现的语义韵,探讨美国媒体对中国国家形象的话语建构及话语背后的意识形态。研究结果发现美国媒体在南海争端报道中关注中国对南海岛礁的主权主张和依据、南海岛礁建设和南海争端解决途径,运用大量的消极语义韵构建了中国“霸权、威胁、国际秩序破坏者和恃强凌弱”的负面形象。美国媒体对中国国家形象的话语构建背后隐藏着美国霸权思维下的话语偏见,究其本质是服务于美国的南海战略和国家利益的结果。
With the improvement of China’s overall national strength, the western media has greatly pro-moted “China Threat Theory” and “China Responsibility Theory”, affecting the construction and dissemination of China’s image in the globe. With the US’s media reporting of the South China Sea disputes as data, this study explores the discursive construction of China’s national image and the ideology behind media discourse by analyzing the semantic preference and semantic prosody of claim, action and dispute, three collocates of “China” in the corpus within the framework of Extended Unit of Meaning. Findings demonstrate that the US media coverage focuses on China’s claims in the South China Sea, island construction and resolution to the South China Sea disputes. China is constructed as hegemonist, threat, a destroyer of international order and a bully with the use of negative semantic prosody in the media discourse, which reveals prejudice in the media discourse. This in essence arises from America’s policy and national interests in the South China Sea regions.