Abstract: Discourse, as the smallest language unit, has drawn a lot of attention in the social context. At present, the research on discourse has gone beyond the sphere of basic language features, focusing on hidden ideologies and deep-seated cultural factors. Norman Fairclough interprets discourse analysis as ‘a research frame on the relationship between language, power and ideology’. Corpus-based discourse analysis is a methodology combining qualitative and quantitative re-search, which is original in terms of both research methods and perspectives. Since 9/11, terrorism has become a significant research topic in social science, including discursive construction of the war on terror from a linguistic perspective. Such research has mainly focused on public knowledge about the measures taken by the American government after 9/11, the discourse strategies of the war on terror of political leaders, the discursive construction of the media surrounding terrorism and so on. The People’s Daily from China and The Sun from the UK were chosen to be the data sources as each has the highest circulation respectively in its own country, which may represents the popular worldview of the populations. Yufang Qian’s book explores how The Sun and The People’s Daily constructed their discourses around terrorism before and after the events of that day, combining corpus approaches with critical discourse analysis and affording an excellent example of a comparative study combined with such analysis.
HUANG Xiaoqin is associate professor and deputy dean of School of Cultures and Communications. She has been undertaking English teaching and research for almost thirty years, and used to be the visiting scholar in Coventry Universities, UK, and the National Center for Foreign Language Education, Beijing Foreign Studies University. In recent years, her interest has covered cross-culture communication and critical discourse analysis and published dozens of essays including discourse studies and translation theory.
Cite this article
HUANG Xiaoqin
A corpus-based analysis in comparison of popular views in China and the UK on terrorism before and after 9/11
Journal of China in Comparative Perspective
Vol.2 Issue 2. 2016, p105-109
DOI: http://doi.org/10.24103/JCCP.2016.2.8
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