RETRACTED: Computerized corpus keyword approaches to evaluation: A case study of evaluative attitudes of “the Belt and Road” reports in mainstream media of China and America

Abstract

This study is a corpus-driven examination of keywords in the news texts related to China’s Belt and Road project reported by China’s English news media and America’s English news media. Keywords retrieved from corpus are often taken to be markers of “aboutness” in specialized corpus. They may be “a guide to the writer’s evaluative position.” Some of them, when explored in more detail, help to reveal evaluative attitudes. In this study, two corpora (China’s news report corpus and America’s news report corpus) are built and the computer corpus tool AntConc3.4.3 is used to generate keywords of these two corpora respectively for detailed concordance analysis in order to reveal different attitudes toward Belt and Road project held by these two countries’ news media. The findings demonstrate that China’s news reports emphasize mutual benefit and reciprocity among the parties involved; while America’s news reports emphasize America’s worry about China’s development because they claim that China poses a threat to America’s national status and interests. This study can help readers understand different news media’ attitudes toward the Belt and Road project and help them think in a critical way while they read news reports of the same topic produced by different news media.