Discursive constructions of scientific (Un)certainty about the health risks of China's air pollution: A corpus-assisted discourse study

Abstract

This article gives a corpus-assisted discourse study of the representations of the health risks of China's air pollution (2011–2014) in Chinese and Anglo-American English-language newspapers with a view to examining their particular ways of constructing scientific (un)certainty about health risks. Findings suggest that although health information has been addressed in the two groups of newspapers, the Anglo-American English-language newspapers prefer to amplify and dramatize the certainty about health risks through such discursive strategies as predication, nomination, and the rhetoric of quantification, while the Chinese English-language newspaper is inclined to highlight the uncertainty about health risks through such discursive strategies as particularizing the Chinese context, complicating the causes of health problems, and arguing for more scientific tests.