Affiliation:
1. The University of Hong Kong
2. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Abstract
Abstract
This study provides an account of how the representation of China has changed diachronically in the South China
Morning Post (SCMP), the leading liberal English-language broadsheet in Hong Kong, since the sovereignty
transfer in 1997. Adopting a corpus-based approach to critical discourse studies, we analyse two corpora of news reports about China in the
newspaper, one for 1997–2000 and the other one for 2015–2018. It is found that the representation of China has changed from very negative
representations focusing on human right problems in the first period to largely positive representations centring upon China’s global and
economic power in the second period. The changes may suggest that the SCMP has to a certain extent shifted its positioning
of China from “them” to “us”, though an ambivalent stance is observed. The ambivalence is discussed in relation to the economic convergence
and political divergence between Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland.
Publisher
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Subject
Linguistics and Language,Sociology and Political Science,History