A Corpus-based Study on the Chinese Brand Image in English Media Along “the Belt and Road”开题报告

1. 研究目的与意义

The “Belt and Road” Initiative is a new form of international cooperation proposed by China under the new situation and new structure of the world. As the main force of the country''s foreign trade, Chinese enterprises have received more and more attention from countries along the “Belt and Road”. A good corporate image helps companies build their brand reputation and enhance their international competitiveness. What’s more, the international image of a company is also an important carrier and expression of the national image. The news reports from foreign media along the “Belt and Road” affect the external image of Chinese companies and the attitude of foreigners towards Chinese companies and even the Initiative itself.

The method of combining corpus and Critical Discourse Analysis has been widely used in discourse analysis. The combination of quantitative and qualitative research method can objectively reveal the the pragmatic strategies in the discourse and make the research more scientific. Therefore, this article will use the English-language media’s reports on Chinese companies as a corpus, from the perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis, to show the image of Chinese enterprises in their discourse and analyze their attitudes behind the news reports. And by doing so, we can provide more systematic linguistic evidences and valuable references for Chinese enterprises to “go global”.

2. 研究内容和预期目标

this paper tries to conduct research on the self-built corpus of news discourse in mainstream english media along the “belt and road”, and then collect and analyze statistics from lexical (including high-frequency words, collocation words, modal verbs, etc.) and reported speech(including reporting mode and news source) perspectives. therefore, we can figure out the image of chinese companies in the eyes of foreign media and their attitudes towards chinese companies, and then give suggestions on how to better improve their corporate image and enhance their international competitiveness.

this project takes critical discourse analysis as the theoretical framework, using corpus linguistics techniques, and adopts a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods to answer the following three questions:

(1) how do the english media in the countries along the “belt and road” construct the image of chinese enterprises at the lexical level and the reported speech level?

3. 国内外研究现状

critical discourse analysis (cda) is a discourse analysis method that reveals the dialectical relationship between language and ideology. it examines the meaning behind the language structure through the superficial linguistic form and its social-cultural background. it then explains the complex relationship between language, power, and ideology. using corpus linguistics as a research method, based on the statistical analysis of a large number of corpora, to study the corporate image construction in the media can draw more systematic and comprehensive conclusions.

corporate image research originated in the 1950s and refers to the sum of knowledge, beliefs, feelings, thoughts, impressions, and values of business entities (williams amp; moffitt 1997). it is also the actual perspective that the corporate stakeholders hold on companies (da silva amp; alwi 2008). british scholar vorley (2002) proposes that corporate image has far-reaching influence on its interior and marketing; noice (2004) presents that the construction of corporate image requires organizational design, and he integrates corporate image construction into ibm''s production and operation; shu chuan and yoojung (2005) studied the similarities and differences between social media and traditional media in corporate image and marketing; more and more scholars (bromley 2003, weber 2006, scott 2009, evans 2008) studied corporate image construction from different angles. and all these researches have greatly promoted the development of corporate image construction.

in the late 1980s, china began to introduce the concept of western corporate image. with the gradual deepening of the market economy, enterprises have begun to realize the importance of image construction to the market competition. domestic research on this aspect has gradually increased. wang yonglong (2007) deeply interpreters the corporate image from the perspective of public relations in his monograph; duan peng (2008) uses quantitative research and qualitative interviews to study the problems of state-owned enterprises in the construction of corporate image; zhou juan (2010) elaborates in her article that in the process of establishing corporate image, news media, corporate websites, and social media platforms, etc. are the main ways for the stakeholders to build corporate image; li lu (2018) conducts a more comprehensive discussion on the image of chinese enterprises in the us newspaper media; jia yunan (2019) studies the image of chinese multinational private enterprises in the arab media, taking huawei as an example.

4. 计划与进度安排

this paper takes the news reports related to chinese enterprises along the “belt and road” as the source of corpus, and then builds corpus to make a quantitative analysis by using lexical linguistic tools such as word frequency list, collocation, and index line; this paper will conduct qualitative research on the text discourse from the perspective of critical discourse analysis, and interpret the image of the chinese company constructed by the media and the attitude behind the media in a quantitative and qualitative way. the corpus linguistic tools to be used include: bfsu qualitative coder, antconc 3.5.0, bfsu collocator 1.0 and log-likelihood ratio calculator.

technical route:

(1) select the top 10 chinese companies in the “belt and road” enterprises as the research objects.

5. 参考文献

abratt, r. (1989). a new approach to the corporate image management process. journal of market management, 5( 1), 63-76.

davis, h. amp; teun, a. v. d. (ed.). (1985). discourse and communication:new approaches to the analysis of mass media discourse and communication. berlin: de gruyter.

da silva, r. v. , amp; syed alwi, s. f. (2008). online corporate brand image, satisfaction and loyalty. journal of brand management, 16(3), 119-144.