英语论文网

Chapter OneINTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study
In the past decades, with the aging of the world population and increasing numberof sub-health crowd, and especially the harassed chronically diseases, people began toseek a healthier, safer alternative treatment with less side-effect and fewer costs.Therefore, the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) as a great treasure of traditionalChinese culture has attracted more attention worldwide, because it conforms to the ideasof “back to nature” pursued by modern people. According to the World HealthOrganization (WHO), there are about four billion people who have used Chinese herbsas treatment which accounts for 80% of the world population. Until 2014, the exportvolume of Chinese medicine went up to 399.2 billion dollars, which also shows thepotential for its immense development in the future.In the 1970s, the famous American journalist James Reston published his article“About my operation on Peking” in New York Times, which reported his experience ofbeing treated with acupuncture and rehabilitation therapy after appendix resection andaroused Americans’ great interest in acupunctureandmoxibustion. With Americans’ in-depth understanding of Chinese medicine, various reports onacupunctureandmoxibustion are being carried out to introduce the ancient andmysterious Chinese medicine to the world, which has pushed western countries’enthusiasm about acupunctureandmoxibustion to a new upsurge. American Media’sreports on Chinese medicine in recent years are becoming comprehensive, which alsodrives the development of critical discourses on traditional Chinese medicine and causesmore western countries’ media to report on traditional Chinese medicine.
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1.2 Need for the Study
Critical discourse analysis is one type of discourse analysis model, which wasput forward and developed by western scholars represented by British linguist Fowlerin the last century. As is a combination of linguistics, sociology, psychology,ethnology and mass media, it forms a new branch of modern linguistics and hascaptured wide attention. Critical discourse analysis focuses on unequal and unfairlanguage phenomenon in the social reality and aims to reveal the relationship betweenlanguage and ideology in discourse through the analysis of language essence andsurface of language. Critical discourse analysis sees discourse as a form of society, soit not only just concerns about the language level, but also emphasizes the discourseof social practice. There are a lot of analysis objects, and the media discourse is a fieldit is particularly interested in. Media in different states and countries report on TCMalso dominated by the influence of ideology.The thesis, in the light of Halliday’s systematic functional theory, makes a studyon the critical discourse concerning the coverage of TCM by media from majorwestern countries in on-line Lexis Nexis news, which can be regarded as an innovativeattempt to uncover the underlying relationship between the dominant discourse andconnotative ideology in the news reports.On the other hand, readers’ comprehensive skill and critical consciousness canalso be cultivated and enhanced so that they can keep an alert eye on the criticaldiscourse from the news reports and realize the ideological information between thelines easily.
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Chapter TwoLITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Basic Concepts and Theories
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