INTRODUCTION: THE CASE FOR CROSS-CULTURAL
CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF BRITISH AND CHINESE MEDIA TEXTS
Sophisticated linguistic tools such as those used in critical
discourse analysis (CDA) have long been available for the precise
analysis of media texts in English. In the UK alone, much work has been
done on debunking, for example, the idea that news coverage of events
is the unbiased reporting of “hard facts” (e.g., Fowler 1991; Glasgow University Media Group 1976, 1980; Hall et al. 1978, 1980). The UK literature
is also good on analyzing what Fowler 1991 calls
the “social construction of news” through processes of
selection (i.e., choices about what has “news value”) and
transformation (i.e., choices about how news is presented – often
linguistic choices, but also involving elements such as layout,
headline size, and position in a newspaper) (e.g., Glasgow University
Media Group 1976, 1980; Hall et al. 1978; Philo
1983).
Similarly, work has been done on news stereotypes and the way these
reinforce themselves (Fowler 1991) and on the
social and economic factors involved in news selection (Fowler 1991, Philo 1983,
Cohen & Young 1973, Hall
1980). There have also been forays into contrastive functional
linguistics, including attempts (e.g., Ghadessy 1988, Carter 1988) to match “situational factors”
with “linguistic features” in written media texts – that
is, to look at how the situational constraints (commercial pressures,
expectations of target audience) acting upon a medium influence the
particular linguistic choices made in presenting the news. These
studies have combined to give linguists, social scientists, and media
commentators a sophisticated understanding of the complex functional
role the media plays in UK society.
The Western literature also contains a number of studies of the media
in China. Various commentators (e.g., Li 1999,
Zhao 1998, Lee 1990)
have written of the comparative lack of freedom enjoyed by the Chinese
media compared with the media in so-called Western societies, even in
the present period, when Chinese journalists perhaps enjoy more freedom
than they have for some time. Zhao, a former Chinese journalist
himself, concedes that over the past decade or so there have been
significant changes in the news media in China. Nevertheless, he
insists that the Chinese Communist Party still retains “overt
political control” of the news media, one of whose roles is to
serve as a government mouthpiece. Zhao writes:
It is certainly true that the rise of mass communication,
especially television, has brought profound changes to the ideological
landscape. The increasing variety and liveliness of cultural
entertainment forms, together with a reduced, explicitly propagandist
content, has resulted in a proliferation of new symbolic forms. This
does not mean, however, that the media are no longer doing ideological
work or politically dominating. Indeed, the media's promotion of
consumerism is no less ideological than their promotion of class struggle
during the Mao era. (1998:6)
On the evidence of the literature, the roles played by the media in
the two societies appear different. The mainstream
government-controlled media in China – newspapers such as the
People's Daily, Guangming Daily, and
Economic Daily, which, according to Zhao (1998:129), are not
available to buy on the streets but are subscribed to with public money
and circulated in offices, classrooms, and other workplaces – are
largely expected to report positive events and/or put a positive
spin on other events that are reported (Zhang
1997, Conley & Tripoli 1992). When
the “correct” positive line to be adopted is not apparent
– for example, at times of uncertainty such as the Tiananmen
crisis of 1989, when for a week disarray within the Chinese Communist
Party was so complete that Propaganda Department officials did not hold
their regular meetings with top Beijing editors – newspapers may
be left floundering, unsure of the line to take. In the case mentioned,
many ultimately adopted an ultra-cautious line (Conley & Tripoli 1992).
By contrast, the British and British-influenced press industries are
commercial at heart, relying on newspaper sales to generate advertising
revenue. Fowler goes so far as to say:
The main economic purpose of newspapers appears to be to
sell advertising space…. Consumer advertising is based on the
representation of ideal fictional worlds, i.e. sets of beliefs about
desirable personal and social behaviour in relation to such products as
cars, deodorants, coffee, hair care, washing powders and sweets. The
texts of newspapers themselves also offer fictional model worlds, for
example the obsessive discussion in the tabloids of television soap
operas as if real, of actors, personalities and stars, the escapism of
the travel pages in the middle class papers. (1991:121)
Where mainstream Chinese media accentuate the positive, British and
British-influenced newspapers appear to thrive on conflict and on
negative news stories. Thus, the then editor of the British-influenced
South China Morning News – based in Hong Kong, not a
million miles away from Beijing – is quoted by Knight &
Nakano (1999:173) as saying; “News is
conflict. News is where there is disagreement…. News is where
someone puts up something and someone else on the other side says where
they have problems with it.”
Unfortunately, although much useful work has been done on the role of
the media both in Britain and in China, a direct linguistic comparison
(at least at the level of CDA) between the media in a Western
English-language society such as the UK and the media in China, though
likely to yield fascinating insights into role differences between the
two country's media and how these affect language choices made by
journalists, has always been difficult because journalists in the two
societies work in different languages. I believe, however, that a
contrastive critical discourse analysis of the English-language
China Daily and English-language newspapers from a Western
society such as the UK may yield interesting insights into how the
differing roles of the media in the two societies affect the ways in
which journalists in the two countries approach the writing of texts,
as evidenced by the linguistic choices they make.
Obviously, just as no single UK newspaper can be taken as
representative of the UK print media in general, no single Chinese
newspaper can be taken as typical of the Chinese print media generally
– especially when that newspaper is not even written in Chinese.
Nevertheless, I would argue that a substantial portion of the
ideological and political constraints operating upon the
Chinese-language media generally operate also upon the China
Daily, making contrastive analysis interesting and fruitful
– a claim that will be discussed further below, along with my
reasons for choosing the UK Times to represent the Western
print media.
The aim of this article, then, is to demonstrate that a linguistic
analytic system that focuses on one specific aspect of language –
what Labov has called “evaluation” – can be
fruitfully applied to a comparative analysis of these particular
British and Chinese print media to reveal differences between the
patterns of language choices made. This, in turn, can deepen our
understanding of the differences in the roles played by the media in
the two societies, and it can supplement existing nonlinguistic
comparisons of the two countries' media.
EVALUATION: A TOOL FOR CONTRASTIVE
LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS
My general field of interest is contrastive functional linguistics.
My particular aim in this study is to sketch a method for unpicking one
aspect of what Carter (1988:8) describes as
“the degrees of neutrality or bias which are inscribed in the
choice of words which reporters make,” and to apply it to a
contrastive analysis of British and Chinese media texts taken from the
Times and the English-language China Daily.
The tool I have chosen for doing this is a particular aspect of
language which Labov 1972 terms
“evaluation.” Evaluation is an aspect of the narrative
structure of a text. The term “evaluation,” Labov says,
refers to “the means used by the narrator to indicate the point
of the narrative, its raison d'être: why it was told and
what the narrator was getting at” (1972:207).
The effect of evaluative elements is to enrich the narrative.
Evaluative devices say to us: “This was terrifying, dangerous,
weird, wild, crazy; or amusing, hilarious, wonderful; more generally
that it was strange, uncommon or unusual – that is, worth
reporting. It was not ordinary, plain, humdrum, everyday or
run-of-the-mill” (Labov 1972:209).
Labov developed the concept of evaluation while studying the speech
patterns of African Americans in south central Harlem, New York. In an
attempt to study the way they used their verbal skills to evaluate
their own experience, he asked a range of subjects, including
pre-adolescents, adolescents, and adults, to record oral narratives in
which they talked spontaneously, with the help of a little prompting
from the interviewer, about personal experiences or events from their
past. When analyzing these narratives, he identified an important
element of discourse that he labeled the “evaluation of the
narrative,” which broadly had to do with the way in which the
speaker embellished his or her narrative to make it more
interesting.
Labov identified and labeled a number of linguistic devices that
narrators employed – consciously or unconsciously – to do
this. They fall into four main categories, which Labov labeled
intensifiers, comparators, correlatives and explicatives. Intensifiers
select one of the events that are organized in a linear series in a
narrative discourse and strengthen or intensify it. Intensifier devices
include repetition, as well as what Labov calls
“quantifiers,” such as all, some, a
lot, much, many, few, all of which add
emphasis. Comparators provide a way of evaluating events by placing
them against the background of other events that might have happened
but did not; thus, they enrich the telling of what did indeed happen.
Correlatives bring together two events that actually occurred so that
they are conjoined in a single independent clause. Explicatives are
used to explain why or how an event happens; they are often carried out
using conjunctions such as while and though, or
connectives such as since or because (Labov 1972).
By analyzing the use of such elements, we can learn much about the
cultural context within which a linguistic exchange takes place. They
help, in a sense, to fix the immediate linguistic exchange within a
much richer, deeper cultural context. They also reveal a good deal
about the relationship between speaker or writer and listener or
reader, and about their expectations and perceptions of each other.
Evaluation was developed in the context of analyzing African American
spoken English vernacular in 1970s Harlem. It could be argued that it
is a big step from that to the kind of written media discourse being
analyzed here. I believe, however, that there are two reasons why the
use of evaluation is justified in a study of this nature. First, the
difference between the written discourse being analyzed here and the
spoken discourse on which Labov was working when he developed the
concept of evaluation is not as great as it at first appears. The oral
narratives on which Labov worked in the early 1970s were not themselves
examples of spontaneous conversation. He did try to record such
spontaneous conversations in the form of face-to-face interviews, but
he found that the resulting discourse was frequently interrupted and
broken. Even worse, he found that because of the formal nature of the
interviews, the conversation he was obtaining was over-monitored by the
speakers themselves, and therefore atypical of unmonitored African
American vernacular. To overcome this, and to obtain large bodies of
uninterrupted, unmonitored speech, he resorted to suggesting topics to
his subjects, encouraging them to talk about important events from
their own past in an uninterrupted way. In this way, he wrote, he was
able to produce “narratives of personal experience, in which the
speaker becomes deeply involved in rehearsing or even reliving events
of his past” (Labov 1972: 207).
The point here is that the examples of discourse Labov obtained were
atypical of the fragmented, broken nature of ordinary unmonitored
speech, containing as they did a strong, uninterrupted narrative
structure. In that sense, they are not unlike newspaper texts. Labov
himself developed a model to represent the structural elements that
make up the kind of narrative he was analyzing, identifying six
elements: the abstract, which sets out what a narrative is about; the
orientation, which establishes the who, where, when, why, and what; the
complicating action (Then what happened?); the evaluation (So what?);
the resolution (What was the outcome?); and the coda, which signals a
return to the present. I would argue that a typical news report
conforms very closely to this model of narrative: indeed, with the
possible exception of the coda, it could arguably serve as a good model
for journalism schools to use when teaching the writing of a news
report.
Second, evaluation was developed as a way of understanding vernacular
narratives where the audience could not be taken for granted. The whole
point about evaluative devices is that they are a way of enriching a
narrative, of grabbing and holding attention. In what circumstances
might a newspaper need to do this? It seems plausible that a newspaper
would need to do this if its very survival depended on attracting and
holding a large readership. This is certainly the case with Western
newspapers such as the Times, commercial operations that rely
for their economic survival on attracting advertising, which in turn is
directly related to the size of the newspaper's readership. It is
not the case with the China Daily, which, as will become
clear, is not even available to buy on the street and is instead
circulated by public subscription. This fundamental difference between
the two newspapers is precisely the point of using evaluation in this
study. Given that the point of evaluation is to grab attention and make
a narrative interesting, we would expect a commercial newspaper like
the Times to be rich in evaluation, while a publicly
subscribed newspaper like the China Daily, essentially a
publicly funded government mouthpiece, would not need to bother with
the extra textual work that evaluation involves. The results do indeed
seem to bear this out – a sufficient justification in itself for
using the technique.
For reasons largely of economy of scale, this study will look at only
one category of evaluation when comparing the two sets of texts being
analyzed: comparators. To conduct an analysis of all four types of
evaluators in an essay of this scope would be unrealistic, and an
initial analysis revealed that the most interesting differences between
the two sets of texts being examined occurred in the use of
comparators.
Comparators add richness and complexity to a narrative by
placing the events described against the background of events that
might have happened but in fact did not, or events that have not
happened yet. For the purposes of this study, and again for reasons of
scope, I will furthermore be concerned with only three main types of
comparators, those that Labov calls negative evaluators, future
evaluators, and modal evaluators.
Negative evaluators – such as the element has no
plans in the sentence The headmaster at William Straw's
school says he has no plans to suspend or discipline the teenager
– specifically place the events described in the context of what
could have been the case, but in fact is not. In this sentence, William
Straw's headmaster could have suspended the teenager, but in fact
he has not. Future evaluators – for example, will
make in The mainland will make greater effort towards
furthering cross-straits ties – tend to be used when
reporting on future events or developments, things that will be the
case in the future but are not at present. Modal evaluators
– like could be taken away in the sentence Inquiries
could be taken away from (police) forces and carried out by independent
investigators – make possible speculation about events that
could or might or should come to be, but that are not the case at
present.
Negative evaluation, as I hope will become apparent from the examples
analyzed below, is a very rich and effective linguistic device for
heightening and enriching the drama of a narrative; at times, it even
makes it possible to construct a reportable narrative out of very
little. Future evaluation is used when talking about what will be.
Modal evaluation can be used in a number of ways, including speculation
and also exhortation.
This study will examine the use of evaluation in a corpus of 50 texts
from the Times and 50 from the China Daily. Of
particular interest will be not only the difference in the frequency of
use of evaluation by journalists working for the two newspapers, but
also the difference in the ways they use evaluation. These differences,
I believe, can be interpreted so as to throw interesting light on the
different roles played by the media in China and Britain.
THE TIMES AND THE CHINA
DAILY
As already acknowledged, no single newspaper can be held to be fully
representational of the print media in either the UK or China.
Nevertheless, it is necessary to restrict the analysis to just a single
newspaper from each culture in order to keep the study manageable, and
also to reduce the problem of variation among different newspapers from
the same country and hence to produce a clearer set of data for
comparison. The use of a single newspaper from each culture to, in a
sense, represent the media of that culture, while admittedly less than
ideal, is not without precedent. Kathleen Jamieson and Karlyn Kohrs
Campbell argue that it is acceptable to use “elite”
newspapers to stand in for others in samples because they shape opinion
in ways that others do not (Jamieson & Kohrs
Campbell 1992:18–19).
The China Daily was chosen because it is the principal
English-language newspaper in China. Being written in English, it is
targeted mainly at non-Chinese people with an interest in China. Jean
Conley and Stephen Tripoli, two American journalists who worked as
sub-editors on the China Daily from 1986 to 1987, point out
that “it is one of the major voices to the outside world of the
People's Republic of China” (Conley &
Tripoli 1992:27). Nevertheless, I would argue that it operates
under many of the same cultural, political, and social constraints as
other mainstream national Chinese newspapers. It is, in fact, owned by
China's principal Chinese-language daily newspaper, the
People's Daily, and is produced in the same building in
Beijing.
Zhao 1998 distinguishes between two main
categories of newspaper in China: those, mainly local evening newspapers,
that are sold on the streets; and those – the major Party organs such
as the People's Daily and specialized newspapers published by
government departments – that are rarely sold on the streets but
rather are subscribed to with public money and are circulated for
consumption in offices, classrooms, and other places of work. The
former, Zhao says, are largely under the direct control of the
municipal Party propaganda committee, but they at least have a more
diversified content than Communist Party organs and are more
entertainment-oriented. The latter – to which group the China
Daily, effectively an English-language sister paper of the
People's Daily, certainly belongs – are much more
directly under the control of the Party.
Being so closely connected with the People's Daily, the
China Daily draws on many of the same sources of information
as its sister paper and adopts the same line on major news items. It is
written in English by Chinese journalists, whose work is then
“polished” by foreign journalists working as sub-editors.
These “polishers,” say Conley & Tripoli, regularly
participate in daily editorial meetings but have little influence over
editorial line: “Polishers had virtually no influence on, and
often little knowledge of, decisions involving the most sensitive
matters” (Conley & Tripoli
1992:27).
Conley & Tripoli leave no doubt about the extent of Party control
over the content of China Daily: “The Party's
control over the news media is exercised through the Propaganda
Department, which answers directly to the Central Committee”
(1992: 36). Moreover, “Propaganda officials,
according to China Daily staff members, meet with media leaders
regularly (usually every two weeks) to discuss news events and to deliver
the Party line on how they should be covered.” Given that the
China Daily is so closely associated with the
People's Daily – and is so clearly subject to the
same processes of Party control as its sister paper – I would
argue that, even though it is written in English, its use for the
purposes of this contrastive analysis is meaningful and can reasonably
be expected to shed some light on the role and workings of China's
national, paid-for-by-subscription Party newspapers
Similarly, I would not attempt to argue that the Times can
be held to be fully representational of the full breadth and diversity
of the British print media. The differences in editorial policy, target
readership, style, and criteria for selection of items found among the
various British print media are well documented in the literature. It
is not, however, these differences in which I am interested. For the
purposes of this analysis, what British newspapers have in common is
more important. They are all commercial operations, which rely on
selling as many newspapers as possible to generate the advertising
revenue necessary for economic survival; they are independent of direct
political (though not commercial) control; they appear to thrive on
conflict and negative reporting; and they all generally make similar
claims about wanting to inform and entertain readers. In these respects
at least, I held the Times to be fairly representative of
British newspapers – sufficiently representative, at least, to
make a direct linguistic comparison between it and the China
Daily interesting. The Times also has the advantage, from
the point of view of this study, of being a broadsheet, as is the
China Daily. It is, in fact, one of the longest established
broadsheet national daily newspapers published in the UK, and arguably
one of the country's most influential newspapers. Moreover, at the
time of gathering materials (1998), it was the British newspaper most
readily available on the Internet.
RESULTS
The results of the quantitative analysis are summarized in Tables
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14. In what
follows, I will first highlight some of the most striking quantitative
differences between the two sets of texts. I will then attempt to
interpret these differences qualitatively by examining in some detail
texts that display interesting features, looking at evaluators of each
category in turn.
Frequency of negative, future and modal comparators in Times and
China Daily texts.
Frequency of comparators in Times and China Daily texts:
words/comparator.
Frequency of negative, future and modal comparators in the Times
and China Daily (words/comparator).
Spread of negative, future and modal comparators in the Times
and China Daily.
Breakdown of comparator evaluation found in Times and China
Daily by direct speech, reported speech, and narrative
text.
Negative evaluation found in Times article 38, and its
attribution.
Negative evaluation in China Daily article 20 and its
attribution.
Negative evaluation in the Times and China Daily:
direct speech, reported speech, and narrative.
Future evaluation found in China Daily article 2 and its
attribution.
Future evaluation in the Times and China Daily:
direct speech, reported speech and narrative.
Future evaluation found in Times article 22 and its
attribution.
Modal evaluation in Times article 31 and its
attribution.
Modal evaluation in China Daily article 2 and its
attribution.
Modal evaluation in the Times and China Daily:
direct speech, reported speech, and narrative.
Quantitative results
It is clear from the quantitative analysis that, overall, use of
negative, future, and modal comparators is higher in the Times
texts than in the China Daily texts. There are just 227
instances of such comparators to be found in the 50 China
Daily texts altogether, compared to 434 in the 50 Times
texts (see Table 1). On a standard t
test of significance, the probability P that such a result is
random over a sample of this size is P = 0.00011. The result
is significant.
The greater number of comparator evaluators found in the corpus of
Times texts is not simply a function of the greater word
length of the Times texts. The average length of
Times texts analyzed is 400 words, and that of China
Daily texts 332 words. Even so, Times texts show an
instance of comparator evaluation on average once every 46.1 words, and
China Daily texts on average once every 73.1 words (see Table 2). Here, the probability P that
such a result is random over a sample of this size is P =
0.01827, again significant.
Even more interesting than this general difference in use of
comparator evaluation, however, are the differences in frequency of
occurrence of each particular type of comparator evaluator analyzed.
Negative evaluators appear in the Times on average once every
187 words, compared to once every 395 words in China Daily;
future evaluators appear once every 144 words in the Times,
and once every 155 words in China Daily; and modal comparators
appear once every 106 words in the Times and once every 213 in
China Daily (see Table 3). What the
breakdown appears to show is that, although the frequency of use of
future comparators is roughly the same in both sets of texts, the
frequency of use of both negative and modal comparators in the
Times is roughly double that in the China Daily. A
t-test of significance reveals that the differences in
frequency of occurrence of both negative and modal evaluators between
the two sets of texts are highly significant (P = 0.000831 in
the case of negative evaluators, and P = 0.006012 in the case
of modal evaluators; hence the differences are not likely to be random
over a sample of this size). Only in the case of future evaluators,
where P = 0.097584, is the difference between the two sets of
texts not significant.
It is also interesting to compare the spread of use of comparators
between the two sets of texts. The analysis reveals (see Table 4) that the use of negative, future, and
modal comparators in the corpus of China Daily texts is
“clumpy: that is, a relatively large number of comparators appear
in a relatively small number of texts, with many texts showing no use
of comparators at all. In the corpus of Times texts, however,
comparator use is spread more evenly throughout the texts. Thus, in the
Times corpus there are only two texts (4% of the total) that
display no use of negative, future, or modal comparators at all,
compared to nine (18%) of China Daily texts. Yet the top five
China Daily texts in terms of frequency of use of negative,
future, and modal comparators contain 33% of all such comparators found
in the China Daily corpus, compared with 24% in the top five
Times texts (see Table 4).
The comparison is even more interesting when broken down into
negative, future, and modal comparators. Only 18 of 50 (36%) of
China Daily texts contain any negative comparators, compared
to 40 of 50 (80%) of Times texts; 33 of 50 China
Daily texts (66%) contain future evaluators, compared to 37 of 50
(74%) of Times texts; and 21 of 50 (42%) of China
Daily texts contain modal evaluators, compared to 44 of 50 (88%)
of Times texts. Again, while the pattern of use of future
evaluators is similar between the two sets of texts, the use of
negatives and modals is quite different.
There is one final breakdown of the statistical data that deserves
consideration before we look at the texts in more detail. The negative,
future, and modal comparators that occur in each of the sets of texts
were categorized into three types: (i) those that occurred in direct
speech (and hence were purportedly the actual words of a person who was
being reported on, selected but otherwise uninfluenced by the
journalist reporting them); (ii) those that occurred in indirect or
reported speech (supposedly a representation of a speaker's own
words, but with a chance for a reporter to add his or her own slant or
color); and (iii) those that occurred in the narrative (and hence can
be taken to be entirely the result of the reporter's or
editor's own choice).
What the results appear to show (see Table
5) is that in the Times corpus, relatively more
evaluation appears to occur in the narrative (51% of all instances);
while in China Daily more evaluation appears in reported
speech.
Since the effect of evaluation is to enrich a narrative, to make it
more dramatic and interesting, and since a dramatic, interesting
narrative can be expected to be of importance to a commercial newspaper
such as the Times, it is tempting to infer from this result
that one reason for the greater use of evaluation in the Times
texts is that journalists are themselves employing it in their own
narrative in an attempt to brighten up their writing. However, a more
detailed breakdown of the figures, as will be shown later, reveals that
the pattern is rather more complex than this.
To attempt to understand the patterns that the quantitative data
reveal, I will now look more closely at the texts themselves,
considering each category of evaluator in turn.
INTERPRETATION
Negative evaluators
Negative evaluators serve to place the narrative action against a
background of events that did not, in fact, happen, but that could have
happened. Examples of this are given in the texts analyzed below. One
effect of placing narrative events against a wider contextual
background is to heighten the dramatic impact of a narrative – by
making the reader aware, for example, of how lucky or improbable the
actual sequence of events was.
The quantitative data reveal that use of negatives is considerably
higher in the Times articles than in the China Daily
articles. There are 107 instances of negative evaluation in The
Times texts, compared to just 42 in the China Daily.
Negative evaluation occurs on average once every 187 words in The
Times, but just once every 395 words in the China
Daily.
As we have seen, these differences are statistically significant. A
closer look at some of the texts displaying a very high or very low
incidence of negative evaluation gives insight into why they may exist.
The Times text showing the greatest degree of negative
evaluation (nine instances altogether, excluding the headline) is
Times article 38. Headlined “School will not punish
Straw's son,” it is an account of how the headmaster of the
school at which Home Secretary Jack Straw's son William was a
pupil said he would not punish the boy for selling marijuana because he
had been punished enough already by the media publicity. Interestingly,
there is even a negative in the headline, which gives some indication
of the way in which things will go.
The negative evaluators found in the text are set out in Table 6.
The first thing that is striking about this article is that the whole
narrative is predicated on a negative. The very first paragraph says
that the headmaster has no plans to suspend or discipline the teenager.
Selling marijuana is not very serious, it is not the end of the world,
and while Jack Straw wishes the incident had not happened, police are
not taking any action, and anyway, say William's fellow pupils,
the boy doesn't deal and would never buy drugs. The entire story
is in fact about nothing happening. But if there is nothing happening,
where is the story? The story is in the denial; which is to say, it is
in the negative evaluation. By beginning the article with the statement
that the headmaster has no plans to suspend or discipline the teenager,
the journalist immediately raises in the reader's mind the
possibility that the headmaster was seriously considering doing so but
has decided not to. In other words, the story is in what might have
happened but didn't. The reader is left wondering what would have
happened if the headmaster had decided otherwise – and is also
left with the feeling that because the head teacher has spoken out to
say he was not intending disciplinary action, and because a newspaper
thought that decision worth reporting, the possibility that the
headmaster might have decided otherwise was a very real one.
Much the same is true of the other, subsidiary negatives that support
the remainder of the story. When Jack Straw says he wishes the incident
had not happened, it reminds readers that it did and emphasizes the
fact that it was a serious matter. When a pupil insists there is no
stigma about buying drugs, it makes readers feel that there is, or why
does the pupil even need to bother denying it? When the police are said
to have recommended no action, it makes the readers realize that they
could easily have done so, and that this would have been a serious
matter.
In all these cases, negative evaluation is being used to contrast
what is with what might have been. But this contrast is being achieved
in different ways. In some instances, it is used to create a reportable
narrative description of a situation in which there is no real
narrative action at all. Thus, in the clause The headmaster at
William Straw's school says he has no plans to
suspend or discipline the teenager, the fact that the head teacher
has no such plans itself becomes a positive, reportable act, and the
fact that he is not taking punitive action is contrasted with the
possibility that he might have decided otherwise. In other instances,
negative evaluation is used to turn a denial (rather than an absence of
action) into a reportable act, thereby making it possible to state
precisely that which is being denied. Thus, a schoolmate of William
Straw says, Will doesn't deal. He
would never buy drugs – and by reporting those
words, the journalist raises in the mind of the reader the possibility
that perhaps William might after all. In yet other instances, negative
evaluation is being used for dramatic emphasis. I really
don't think it is the end of the world, says the
head teacher, and by saying so somehow manages to imply that it almost
was. It was inevitable for a parent to … . wish the
incident had not happened, Jack Straw is indirectly
reported as saying, emphasizing once more how serious was the fact that
it did.
The reason this story is newsworthy, even though it is actually about
nothing happening, is that the main protagonist is the son of an
important and powerful man. The importance of the protagonist means the
journalist considers it worthwhile to use certain linguistic techniques
(including negative evaluation) to construct a reportable narrative
even when very little has actually happened. The technique employed
here of using a negative (or series of negatives) to do this is one
that, I would argue, is commonly used by Western journalists. If there
is a rumor about a scandal involving a famous person and it can't
be proved, get the person in question to deny it, and you've got
your story.
Is the pattern of use of negative evaluation found in Times
article 38 repeated in other Times articles showing
comparatively high use of evaluation? Essentially yes. Times
article 5, which has seven instances of negative evaluation, is
headlined “Blair condemns Diana stories.” A look at a few
instances of negative evaluation in the article reveal that, again, it
derives much of its drama and richness from the contrast between what
is and what might have been. Thus: Blair's staff said his
remarks should not be seen as criticism of Fayed
constitutes a denial which itself becomes a reportable act and allows
what is being denied to be repeated, prompting instant speculation that
what is being denied might actually be the case. [Fayed]
told a newspaper he … did not believe the
crash was an accident emphasizes that there was more to the crash
than meets the eye, by contrasting the current belief that it was an
accident with the possibility that it was not. He
[Blair] is not singling out any individual or
enterprise, insisted one spokesman is another denial, leaving the
lingering suspicion that Blair may be doing precisely what the
spokesman says he is not doing, a suspicion reinforced by use of the
verb insisted, with its rather negative overtones.
Blair has not discussed his views of the
speculation surrounding Diana's death with the Prince of
Wales makes a “positive out of a negative,” like
William Straw's headmaster is not going to take disciplinary
action; the journalist is able to make something positively
reportable out of the fact that Blair has not done something simply by
reporting that he hasn't done it.
Much the same pattern is seen in Times article 40, headlined
“Queen pops into haunted local,” which also contains seven
instances of negative evaluation. Here, we are told that there was
no sign of Nancy the resident ghost – a sentence
that neatly establishes the apparent fact of the ghost's existence
by saying she wasn't there. Later, the pub's landlady is
quoted as saying, “I did not offer her a
drink and she [the Queen] did not ask for
one;” by saying so, she succeeds in efficiently making a
narrative out of a complete absence of event by contrasting actual with
potential happenings.
Although the Times articles generally use more evaluation
than the China Daily texts analyzed, there are Times
texts that display little or no evaluation. One such is Times
article 48. The article, headlined “Relatives see film of sunken
trawler,” is an account of an inquiry into the sinking of a ship,
the Westhaven. The events being investigated are actually very
dramatic, but the report is distant and impersonal: a mere recital of
facts rather than a colorful narrative. Thus, The boat was dragged
to the seabed so quickly that one of the liferafts was caught in the
mast and a second failed to inflate. Mr Pattison and his crew, Alan
Cunningham, 28, Chris Prouse, 23, and Mark Hannah, 30, died. There
is no attempt here to get into the minds of the crew as they died; no
“they could not get to safety because the liferafts
failed.” The story is allowed to tell itself, and the suffering
of the men is left to the reader's imagination. The contrast with
the evaluatively rich articles analyzed above – which are
actually reports of far less dramatic events – is great.
Negative evaluation, clearly, is a rich and effective linguistic
device for heightening and enriching the drama of a narrative –
and even for constructing a narrative out of little or nothing. It does
this essentially by contrasting what is with what is not but might have
been. There are a number of ways in which this is achieved in the
articles so far considered: by making a positive out of a negative and
creating a reportable narrative description of a situation in which
there is no real narrative action at all; by turning a denial into a
reportable act, thereby making it possible to state precisely that
which is being denied; by reminding us of what might have been and so
increasing dramatic emphasis; and by heightening dramatic tension by
contrasting two different possible realities (as in Fayed's saying
he did not believe the crash was an accident).
Negative evaluation is comparatively rare in the China Daily
texts analyzed, and, as the quantitative data reveal, its distribution
through the corpus of texts is comparatively clumpy. Of the 50 texts
analyzed, 32 contain no negative evaluators at all, while the top five
texts in terms of frequency of negative evaluation contain 52% of all
instances of negative evaluation found in the corpus.
The China Daily text that displays the greatest use of
negative evaluation is text 20. This text, headlined “Beijing
tightens control over fireworks in city proper,” contains no
fewer than eight instances of negative evaluation – almost
one-fifth of the total for all 50 China Daily texts studied.
The instances of negative evaluation that occur are set out in Table 7.
Clearly, there is an element here of “what is” being
contrasted with “what is not, but might have been”: The
officially arranged fireworks displays ought to have been a pacifier
(what is not) but actually became a fuse sparking further trouble (what
is); no fireworks-caused fires have been reported (what is), but they
might well have been (what is not, but could have been).
Equally clearly, though, there are no examples in this text of
negative evaluators being used to bolster or brighten a narrative, as
is often the case in the Times articles – no turning of
denials into reportable fact, no making a positive out of a negative to
create a narrative where really there is none (unless the
people's congress ruled that no firecrackers would be allowed
is counted). The tone imparted by the negatives here is one of
disapproval – almost as though the authorities, through their
mouthpiece the newspaper, are saying, “This is what we warned
would happen if you behaved like this.”
The China Daily text displaying the next highest use of
negative evaluation is text 42, headlined “Mainland to export
live chickens to Hong Kong.” The article is an account of
attempts by the Chinese government to resume export of chickens from
southern China to Hong Kong following a scare (prophetic, in the light
of SARS) caused by an outbreak of avian flu. It contains five instances
of negative evaluation: the chickens will not reach
markets until Sunday; the price for live chickens
is not expected to increase greatly; no case
[of avian flu] had been detected either in humans or
among poultry in Guangdong Province; no case of
humans infected by the bird flu has been reported;
although no cases of A H5N1 bird flu in human
beings and chickens have been reported…. Guangdong will further
tighten its testing.
What is notable about these cases of negative evaluation is that they
are all, without exception, flat statements of fact, presented with the
ring of absolute authority. China Daily text 42 in fact reads,
to Western eyes, more like a government press release than an
independent news report. The litany of no cases somehow has
the effect of bludgeoning the reader into acceptance of what is said
rather than, as is the case in Times articles rich in negative
evaluation, raising in the reader's mind the possibility that what
is denied may actually be the case.
The difference may have something to do with the way in which
negative evaluation in the Times texts tends to be
personalized, whereas in the China Daily it is not. In
Times text 38, about Jack Straw's son, all but one of the
instances of negative evaluation occur in the context of either direct
or reported speech, and hence the denial which it represents can be
attributed to an identified individual (the headmaster, Philip Barnard;
Jack Straw himself; three unnamed but distinct fellow-pupils of William
Straw) (see Table 6). Much the same is true
of Times text 5, “Blair condemns Diana stories,”
where, variously, Tony Blair's staff, Blair's spokesman (and
indirectly through him, Blair himself), and Mohamed al-Fayed are all
associated with denials.
In the few China Daily texts that display relatively high
use of negative evaluation, this is not the case. In China
Daily article 20 about firework controls in Beijing, negative
evaluation is associated with, in order: a 1994 regulation ratified by
the city people's congress (the city people's congress
ruled that no firecrackers would be allowed);
what appears to be a rather preachy authorial expression of opinion
(However, the displays became not a pacifier but
a fuse); other apparent authorial statements of fact that are
actually drawn from a report in the Beijing Youth Daily, which is
itself based upon a report from the Beijing Fireworks Ban Office; and
statements by a generalized category of doctors, the authority for
which also comes ultimately from the report in Beijing Youth News (see
Table 7).
This depersonalization of negative evaluation is equally
marked in China Daily text 42, where it is indirectly
associated with two sources; the World Health Organization and
Guangdong Province's poultry export agency, the Guangnanhang
Company. The effect is to give an air of authority to the denials, to
institutionalize them so that the reader feels he or she has little
choice but to accept them. The effect of the personalization
of negative evaluation as found in the Times, by contrast, is
to heighten the sense of human drama, and simultaneously to decrease
the authoritativeness of the denials (since a denial by a single,
fallible human will always carry less weight than one by an institution
the size of the World Health Organization).
Given the contrasting role played by the Times and China
Daily in their respective societies, it would seem reasonable to
predict that this pattern of personalization and depersonalization of
negative evaluation would be repeated throughout the corpus of
Times and China Daily texts. If so, we might expect
to find that the proportion of negative evaluators that occur in the
context of direct or reported speech is higher in the Times
texts than in the China Daily.
The quantitative data summarized in Table 5
above revealed that, in general, comparator evaluation in the context
of direct and reported speech was proportionally less likely to be
found in the Times than in the China Daily.
Specifically, just 49% of negative, future, and modal evaluation in the
corpus of Times texts occurred in the context of direct or
reported speech, compared to 60% per cent of that found in the
China Daily texts. This seems counter to what might be
expected on the basis of the discussion above. Break the data down,
however, and the picture is different. In regard to negative
evaluation, a significantly higher percentage occurs in the context of
direct or reported speech in the Times (69% of all instances)
than in the China Daily (43% of all instances) (Table 8). This would seem to support the conclusion
that the pattern of personalization and depersonalization of negative
evaluation noted above is repeated throughout the corpus of texts.
There is one other interesting aspect of the China Daily
articles examined above. In each case, most instances of negative
evaluation that occur appear to be used in the context of the narrative
of the text itself; in other words, they appear to be in the
journalist's own “voice.” Closer examination of the
texts, however, reveals – as noted above – that while they
may appear to be authorial statements of fact, in truth there is a
specific authority given for these statements. China Daily
article 42, about avian flu, is a good example. The litany of no
cases appears to be simple statements of fact in the author's
own voice, but in fact, it is clear that the information actually
derives from the World Health Organization.
Future evaluators
As Table 3 shows, the Times texts
analyzed use approximately twice as many negative and modal evaluators
as the China Daily texts. Future evaluation, however, is
different in that there is no significant difference in the frequency
with which it is used in the two sets of texts (a future evaluator
occurs on average once every 144 words in the Times, once
every 155 words in China Daily). This is not, on the face of
it, what might have been expected. So what is happening?
Future evaluators serve to place the narrative action – the
actual sequence of events, taking place now or in the recent past, that
are the subject of the narrative – in the context of events that
have not yet happened but could happen in the future. They serve to
contrast the now with the maybe, or the could be, or with what we want,
hope, or expect might come to be.
In common with most other comparators, they heighten the interest of
a narrative by placing it against a rich background of other events
that have not actually happened, but could. It is not surprising,
therefore, that they are one of the more commonly used forms of
evaluation found in the Times texts. But why are they so
widely used in the China Daily?
A closer examination of the China Daily texts that are
richest in use of future evaluators gives some clues. These are
China Daily article 2 with 11 instances, and China
Daily articles 13 and 28 with nine instances each. China
Daily article 2, headlined “One country, two systems,”
is a clearly political piece stressing the importance of closer ties
between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan. It is a comparatively long
article, which might in part account for the number of future
evaluators, but nevertheless, the way in which these evaluators are
used is interesting. The instances of future evaluation found are set
out in Table 9.
The future evaluators used here express plans, intentions, and hopes
for the future. More generally, when taken together, they add up to a
political vision of the future – a vision held by senior Chinese
Party officials. If such and such happens, they say, then so and so
will also happen, as a consequence of such and such or as part of a
plan. The vision of the future held out here is implicitly contrasted
with the present; implicit in the whole text is the sense that things
are not, at present, the way the Party would like them to be. A better
future will be the reward if certain things are done, runs the
message.
China Daily article 13, headlined “New fares to
encourage residents to take taxis,” is about a much less
politically sensitive and important issue – promoting the use of
taxis to take some of the strain off Shanghai's public transport
system – but it still clearly encapsulates a vision of the
future. Thus: Next month, taxis will charge ten
yuan … . instead of 14.4 yuan; each kilometre after the first
three … will be charged at two yuan; people
who take a taxi seven kilometres or less will be paying
slightly less; taxi drivers … say the change will
hurt business; “The new pricing member will
have a great impact on us,” said [taxi
driver] Xiao Li; “I will earn
just 30 yuan”; Bargaining will only
result in unfair competition.
Here, a local government policy is being set out; we are being told
simply what will come to pass. Interesting here is the fact that a
voice of dissent is allowed to intrude: taxi drivers say the move will
hurt their business, and that they will be worse off as a result of it.
Such a voice of dissent is comparatively rare in the Chinese texts
analyzed. It has perhaps been allowed here because the issue is not
seen as a very important or sensitive one.
Finally, China Daily article 28, headlined “Chongqing
plans ambitious move,” sets out another vision of the future
– the city of Chongqing's plans to attempt to compete
economically with Shanghai. Here we see future evaluators in clauses
such as the following: Chongqing will provide
more favourable conditions for foreign investors;
“We will make Chongqing one of the best
investment choices in China; more workers will be
laid off from State-owned enterprises; the municipal
government seems confident the problems will be solved.
Again, intention and aspiration is the order of the day, with the
repeated use of the future will implying a firmness and
singleness of purpose that will brook no argument.
In the China Daily texts, then, future evaluators appear in
the context of articles that set out official visions of the future.
Doubts are occasionally allowed to creep in (taxi drivers fear they
will be worse off; workers will be laid off), but the overall tone of
the articles expresses firmness of purpose and planned progress, moving
forward toward a planned better future.
A possible explanation for the comparatively frequent use of future
evaluators in the China Daily texts, therefore, might be that
the China Daily, in its role as mouthpiece of the Chinese
Communist Party, is seeking in the articles in which such future
evaluation is found to present the authorities' plans for a better
future, and to portray the events of today as though they are taking
place on the road toward a definite future goal.
This is reinforced by the fact that, unlike in the case of negative
evaluation, the greater proportion of future evaluators in the
China Daily texts occur in the context of either reported or
direct speech; in other words, they are personalized. A total of 62% of
instances of future evaluation found in the China Daily occur
in the context of either reported or direct speech (see Table 10). What we are seeing, I would suggest, is
senior party or other authority figures giving their views about the way
forward.
China Daily article 2, discussed above, is a good example of
this. Of the ten instances of future evaluation found, five occur in
the mouths (in the context of either direct or indirect speech) of
three named senior officials: Chinese foreign minister Qian Qichen;
Chen Yunlun, director of China's Taiwan Affairs Office; or Tang
Shubei, vice-chairman of the Association for Relations Across the
Straits, Arats (see Table 9). Four more,
though not all necessarily strictly in the form of reported or direct
speech, are clearly associated with a shadowy authority referred to
only as the mainland, which in the context of this article
refers to the government of the People's Republic of China, and
thus to the Communist Party. Only one is genuinely in the voice of the
journalist: the brief statement It's still unclear when the
semi-official talks will resume.
This personalization of future evaluation does not appear to occur to
the same extent in the Times texts analyzed. While the
frequency and spread of use of future evaluators in the Times
appears, from the initial quantitative data, to be superficially
similar to that in the China Daily, Table
10 reveals that, in contrast with the China Daily, only
15% of instances of future evaluation occur in the form of either
direct or reported speech. The vast majority appear directly in the
narrative.
The Times article displaying the greatest use of future
evaluation is text 22, headlined “Middle class to foot bill for
Budget reforms.” Here, future evaluators occur no fewer than 24
times. Of these, however, 20 are in the journalist's own voice.
Just four occur in the form of readily attributable direct or reported
speech (the one example marked * occurs in the narrative voice but can
be reasonably attributed) (see Table 11).
Times text 22 is a preview of Chancellor Gordon Brown's
first full budget, and the repeated use of futures is a result of
predicting what the chancellor will do. It is certainly not a negative
or hostile piece; rather, it is a speculative piece such as is not
uncommon in the British press. Presumably the journalist has some
grounds for writing what he or she has (possibly based on an advance
copy or summary of the chancellor's speech, or on an
off-the-record briefing by an aide, a supposition supported by two
quotes directly from an unnamed source), but there is almost no attempt
to attribute any of the information given. It is almost all delivered,
quite flatly, in the reporter's own voice. The effect of this, I
would suggest, is to distance the newspaper from Gordon Brown's
plans, thus allowing it to stand back from them and assess or analyze
them in what appears to be a more independent and objective manner.
The contrast with the way future evaluation is used in China
Daily texts is clear. There, it occurs in the context of reported
or direct speech attributable mainly to named individuals or
organizations. The effect is for those organizations or individuals to
be able to claim ownership (and hence credit) for the plans or
intentions being reported, and at the same time to make the newspaper
seem supportive of them. The Times, by reporting such plans in
the form of simple statements of fact in the author's own voice,
actually manages to sound more distant and skeptical about them, and is
able to place them in the context of an article which appears to be
weighing the merits of the plans in the balance.
The same is true of other Times texts. The one showing the
second greatest use of future evaluation is text 50, headlined
“Tax credit for poorer families will go to women,” which
contains 11 instances. They include: A new tax credit to top up the
income of lower paid families will now go
automatically to women; couples will fill
out a joint form, which will include a box
which women can tick; the new credit will also
include a special payment for childcare; It
will be more generous than the family credit. Again,
we see little or no attempt to place the facts stated in the voice,
direct or indirect, of any government official or spokesman, allowing
for a more distant, skeptical, and analytical article.
Modal evaluators
The third type of comparator being looked at here is the modal
evaluator. In traditional grammar, modals in English mainly indicate
the attitudes, abilities, or opinions of the subjects of a particular
clause toward the actions or states described in that clause. These
attitudes or abilities may include willingness (I would
love to go if the weather's OK); ability
(he can read: I can't);
obligation (you must go); permissibility
(you may go); possibility (you
might be able to get there that way); and volition
(I will go!). Here, though, we are examining
the role of modals as comparators: deliberate linguistic choices made
by the narrator to enrich the actual sequence of events reported on by
setting them against a wider background of things which may, or could,
or will, or must, or can't happen.
A look at the quantitative data reveals that the Times
articles analyzed use over twice as many modal evaluators (188) as the
China Daily articles analyzed (78) (see Table 1). Again, this is not principally a function
of the longer length of the Times articles. Even when the
slightly shorter average length of the China Daily texts is
taken into account, modal evaluators appear twice as frequently in the
Times texts analyzed (on average once every 106 words) as in
the China Daily texts (once every 213 words) (see Table 3). As we saw, these differences are highly
significant. Use of modal evaluation is also more evenly spread through
the corpus of Times texts than is the case with the China
Daily texts. 88% of all Times texts analyzed contain a
modal evaluator, compared with just 42% of China Daily texts;
the top five Times texts contain 32% of all modal evaluators
found in the corpus, compared to 46% in the top five China
Daily texts (see Table 4).
Clearly, the pattern and frequency of use of modal evaluation is
quite different in the Times texts and China Daily
texts analyzed. But why?
The Times article showing the greatest use of modal
evaluation is Times article 31, which contains 15 instances.
Headlined “Outside agencies may investigate police
complaints,” the article is an account of proposals to take away
responsibility for investigating complaints against the police from the
police themselves and instead to appoint independent investigators.
Modal evaluation found is set out in Table
12.
Here, as was the case with future evaluation, we are looking at a
text that is talking about a vision of a possible future. Implicit in
the story is a contrast between the situation now – in which the
police themselves handle complaints made against them – and what
the situation could be in the future, with those complaints handled by
external investigators. The difference between the vision of the future
expressed here and the visions of the future expressed using future
evaluation in the texts analyzed earlier is that here we are talking
not about definite plans for the future, but about possibilities
– something that participants would like to bring about, if it
were possible. There is a lesser degree of certainty implied in this
possible vision of the future than if future evaluators had been used.
If, for example, Jack Straw had said Inquiries will be
taken away from police forces, that would have been a
definite intention, a planned future move. By saying they could
be taken away, he is talking about something that may happen, but
also may not.
Times article 46, headlined “Irvine calls for curbs
that would suppress Cook story,” shows the second highest usage
of modal evaluators (13 instances). This is an article looking at the
impact of new curbs on press freedom being called for by the Lord
Chancellor, Lord Irving. Modal evaluators include the following:
Robin Cook's affair with his mistress … would
not have been disclosed under new curbs; people
could go to the commission and ask it to stop stories
being published; In an interview … Lord Irvine is asked
if he would have expected the commission to order
the News of the World not to print the story;
“I would hope that that would be the view
that the PCC would form in a case like that,”
he said.
Here, again, we have a vision of a possible future that is contrasted
sharply with the reality of the today of the article. Robin Cook's
affair was in fact reported, but it would not have been if the
suggested new curbs on press freedom had been in place. Again, though,
the use of modal evaluators lessens the sense of certainty or
inevitability that this vision of the future will come about.
People will be able to go to the commission
would have implied this will be the case; people could
go to the commission implies it may be the case if
something else also comes to be – here, clearly, if the Press
Complaints Commission issues tough new privacy guidelines. In this
article, the lack of certainty appears to derive from the fact that it
is not Lord Irvine himself who has the power to issue such guidelines.
He can only call upon the Press Complaints Commission to do so.
Times texts 19 and 30, both comparatively rich in use of
modal evaluators, show a similar pattern. Text 19, headlined
“Supermarket and hospital car parking may be taxed,” is an
account of government proposals to levy a tax on parking spaces, but
these are only measures being considered. Thus, we read
The money would probably be levied
voluntarily and the proposed charge could raise
£650 million. Times article 30, headlined
“Police chiefs get power to sack corrupt officers,” is a
story about definite powers to be granted by Home Secretary Jack Straw.
It does therefore include future evaluators (The Home
Secretary will announce the biggest shake-up of the
handling of police complaints). Where the modals begin to appear
is when the journalist begins to speculate about precisely what the
shake-up will mean: If officers refuse to answer questions
this could be used against them; Officers
who are lazy or incompetent could also find
themselves facing the sack. In the Times articles,
then, modal evaluation clearly is being used primarily to describe a
vision of a future, but a possible, or wished-for, or speculative
vision of the future rather than a planned, intended one as is the case
when future evaluation is used.
Modal evaluation occurs considerably less frequently in the China
Daily texts than in the Times texts, but it does occur. A
closer look at the China Daily text displaying the greatest
use of modal evaluation – article 2, headlined “One
country, two systems,” about the importance of improved business
and economic relations with Taiwan, which contains 10 instances –
reveals, however, that this device is not being used in the same way as
in the Times. China Daily article 2 – also the
Chinese text that displays the greatest use of future evaluation
– clearly sets out a vision of a better future. But the modal
evaluators found tend to be those of obligation, rather than of
possibility as in the Times texts (see Table 13).
All but one of the modal evaluators found in China Daily
article 2, in fact, is a modal of obligation such as must,
can, or should; and, as Table
13 shows, most of them are directly attributable to a senior
government source, China's then vice-premier and foreign minister,
Qian Qichen.
The contrast with the type of modal evaluation found in
Times article 31 is interesting. As with the China
Daily text, most of the modal evaluators found in Times
article 31 are attributable to a senior government source, in this case
Jack Straw, then home secretary. But the types of modals used by Straw
are almost exclusively modals of possibility or speculation. Straw uses
only a single modal of obligation (bad officers must
be dealt with) and the Commons Select Committee on Home
Affairs another (the Home Office should look
at) (see Table 12).
This difference in types of modal evaluators possibly says as much
about the relationship between the government and the governed in the
two societies as it does about the roles of the media. The pattern of
China Daily texts using modals of obligation and
Times texts using modals of speculation is, however, repeated
throughout the corpus of texts. Of the 74 modal comparators found in
the China Daily texts, 52 (70%) are modals of obligation such
as must, can, or should. In the
Times texts, just 30 out of 186 (16%) of modal comparators are
modals of obligation. The vast majority of modal comparators in the
Times texts (145/186, or 78%) are those of possibility or
speculation (would, could, may, might). This compares with
just 22/74 (30%) of the modal comparators in the China
Daily texts.
Given the probing, speculative nature of much Western reporting, it
might be expected that one reason for the large proportion of modals of
speculation found in the Times corpus is that they occur in the context
of the narrative and are the result of the journalist's
speculating on, for example, what certain government proposals might
mean. There are indeed a couple of examples of this kind of use in
Times article 31 (new legislation … would
take some time to arrange). By and large, however, as
Table 14 reveals, it is not the case that
significantly more modals of evaluation occur in the context of
narrative as opposed to direct or reported speech in the Times
than in the China Daily. In the Times, 38% of modal
evaluators occur in the context of narrative; in the China
Daily, this is only slightly lower, at 33%.
CONCLUSION
A contrastive, quantitative/interpretative analysis of 50 texts
from the Times and 50 texts from the China Daily has
revealed that there are interesting differences in the ways in which
evaluation is being used in the two sets of texts. These can, I
believe, be plausibly interpreted in the light of the different roles
played by the two newspapers in their respective societies.
The Times belongs to the Western tradition of journalism. It
is commercial, relying on newspaper sales to generate advertising; it
is independent of direct political (though not commercial) control; it
thrives on conflict and negative reporting, including adopting a
questioning, skeptical attitude toward the words and actions of
authority figures. Claims of the Western media to provide unbiased
reporting of hard fact have, however, been widely debunked.
The China Daily is quite different. Despite being published
in the English language, it belongs to a group of Chinese newspapers
subscribed to with public money and generally under the close control
of the Communist Party. Party control is exerted on the China
Daily and other publicly subscribed Chinese newspapers through the
Propaganda Department. It is written in English by Chinese journalists,
whose language is “polished” by foreign sub-editors. These
foreign “polishers,” however, have no say on the editorial
line. Effectively, the China Daily serves as a mouthpiece for
the Party in its efforts to communicate with the wider world. As such,
in common with other publicly subscribed newspapers, it is generally
expected to report positive events and/or put a positive spin on
other events reported.
The effect of evaluation is to enrich a narrative; to make it more
dramatic and interesting. It is unsurprising, then, to find that the
Times, which relies for its economic survival on selling
newspapers, is richer in use of evaluation than the China
Daily, which does not. This, however, is a comparatively trivial
finding. Of much more interest are the differences in the ways in which
particular types of evaluative comparators are used.
Negative evaluation in the Times is twice as common as in
the China Daily, and moreover it is used in a quite different
way. The Times needs to develop stories about people its
readers are perceived to be interested in, and to write those stories
in a style that is entertaining and dramatic. Use of negative
evaluation in the Times reflects this, effectively heightening
and enriching the narrative, or even making it possible to construct a
narrative out of nothing. The fact that a good proportion of negative
evaluation found in the Times is personalized only heightens
the sense of drama; the reports involve real individuals involved in
real crises.
In the China Daily, use of negative evaluation is quite
different. It is far less common, and when it is used, it is more often
than not depersonalized; well over half of all instances occur in the
narrative rather than being attributable to an individual, and even
where attribution is possible, it is often to an organization rather
than an individual. Negative evaluation here occurs largely in the
context of flat statements of fact, presented with the ring of absolute
authority. This is exactly what might be expected from a mouthpiece for
an authority such as the Chinese Communist Party.
Future evaluation appears in both sets of texts in the context of
articles about future plans and intentions. Future evaluators appear
with a similar frequency in each set of texts, but again, the way in
which they are used is different. In the China Daily, future
evaluation appears in articles that present an essentially political
vision of a better future. Future evaluation is largely personalized;
almost two-thirds of instances occur in the context of either direct or
reported speech, and even many of those that appear in narrative are
directly or indirectly attributable, often to a government official or
body. The effect is to give the named Party individuals or
organizations ownership of the plans being expressed. In the
Times, future evaluators also appear in the context of
articles about the future. Here, however, future evaluation is
depersonalized. The vast majority of instances – 85% –
occur in the narrative, and there is often little attempt to attribute
the information about future plans that is presented. The effect is to
distance the newspaper from those plans, and to allow it to appraise
them in what appears to be an independent manner. Again, the
differences in use of future evaluation fit well with what might be
expected given the different role of the two newspapers.
Modal evaluation appears about twice as frequently in the
Times as in the China Daily. Again, instances appear
in the context of articles that discuss future plans. The key
difference between the two newspapers is that in the Times,
the evaluators tend to be modals of speculation – this
might happen – whereas in the China Daily, they
are modals of obligation – this must or should
happen.
This, again, is what might be expected given the different roles the
two newspapers play. In both sets of texts, however, the majority of
modal evaluators are attributable, occurring in the context either of
direct or reported speech. It may be that the difference in use of
evaluators therefore says as much about the relationship between
authority figures and those they have authority over (i.e., those their
remarks are addressed to, either directly or through the medium of the
newspapers) as about the role of the two newspapers themselves.
These are all interesting findings in themselves. The wider
significance of this study, however, is that it demonstrates that the
sophisticated tools of critical discourse analysis, which have been
applied so fruitfully to analysis of the English-language media and
have added so greatly to our understanding of the way those media
operate, can also be applied usefully to analysis of Chinese media,
albeit Chinese media written in English. This makes it possible to
supplement nonlinguistic studies of the Chinese media with studies
conducted upon hard linguistic grounds, as well as making possible
contrastive studies, such as this one, in which certain sections of the
Chinese media can be directly compared with Western English-language
media at the level of CDA and functional grammar.1
NOTE: Complete analytical data in the form of detailed tables
are available from the author.
