A Corpus-Assisted Discourse-Historical Approach to the Reports on China’s High-Speed Rail in Chinese Mainstream Media (2016-2025)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54097/21d85y92Keywords:
China’s high-speed rail, CGTN, Mainstream media, Discourse-Historical Approach, Corpus analysis.Abstract
In recent years, China’s high-speed rail (HSR) has become a vital carrier of Chinese national technological image and Belt and Road international cooperation, yet influenced by political and ideological factors, some Western mainstream media tend to avoid objective reporting on China’s HSR, which hinder its global recognition. Existing studies mainly focus on HSR’s economic and technological benefits and negative Western media reports, while insufficient attention has been devoted to examine how China’s official media construct HSR’s overseas image. Therefore, this study adopts the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) to analyze English news reports of China Global Television Network (CGTN) on China’s HSR from 2016 to 2025, aiming to explore its themes, discursive strategies and socio-historical contexts. The findings reveal that (1) CGTN’s reports construct three core themes, namely technological advancement, domestic and global layout, and passenger travel services and operational conditions; (2) in terms of discursive practice, CGTN adopts literal and metaphorical nomination and positive predicative collocations to portray China’s HSR as a landmark, pioneering and world-class infrastructure project; (3) such consistent positive framing is driven by CGTN’s mission of international communication, political and economic demands, and national image communication needs. This study shed light on corpus-assisted DHA research for infrastructure diplomatic discourse, and provides perspectives for China’s international media to shape credible technological national images.
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