A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Language of Evaluation and Stance : Chinese and Korean Newspapers' Headlines on THAAD

Abstract

In the contrasting reports of the THAAD deployment in South Korea, the conflicting national media stances are reflected in the discursive patterns of the Chinese and Korean newspapers' headlines. Grounded upon van Dijk's socio-cognitive perspective in the critical discourse analysis, these patterns are analyzed in terms of the Attitude systems of the Appraisal Theory. The data of headlines are collected from online articles in Chinese and Korean major daily newspapers. The findings show that the newspapers' contrasting stances on the THAAD issues are discursively differentiated into their attitudinal representations of the headlines. These results also demonstrate the discursive strategy of positive self and negative other presentation to establish each nation's solidarity involved in the THAAD issues.