Who is to Blame?

Abstract

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) has been broadly applied to understand the social implications of discourse, yet few studies have compared different forms of discourse in Chinese media, especially on the topic of race. Referencing the CDA framework, this study compares two sample news items from Mainland China and Taiwan about the killing of George Floyd and the associated social movements, analyzing their presentational forms, sourcing patterns, headlines, lexical and syntactic choices. A racial analysis is also conducted to better comprehend how racism is constructed and potentially reproduced in Chinese media. The results suggest that the two media sources bifurcate in reporting styles – due to respective journalistic environments and regulations – and their attitudes towards the cause of the reported event. However, they both explicitly identify the issue of racism in the US. This study applies CDA in a non-US context to uncover the reporting styles and racial connotations in Chinese news discourse from Mainland China and Taiwan, identifying future directions for racial discourse analysis in Chinese media.