A Comparative Study of Proximization Strategies in Trade Friction Reporting in Sino-American Mainstream Media 中美主流媒体贸易摩擦报道中的趋近化策略对比研究开题报告

1. 研究目的与意义（文献综述包含参考文献）

1.introductionlanguage has a great role to play, not only as a medium of communication, but also as a tool for politicians to gain popular support and promote their values. critical discourse analysis (cda) has helped people to analyse the relationship between language and social influence, but it has many shortcomings. cap has formally proposed proximization theory, which has remedied the shortcomings of cda. it is cognitively oriented and has gained the attention of many scholars.1.1 background of the research speakers use a particular type of language, political discourse, to make their speeches more convincing in order to get the audience to support them. most listeners learn about political events through television, newspapers, radio, etc. they are often deceived by politicians because they do not know the truth. politicians often use many modifiers and the linguistic strategy of proximization in order to achieve their aims. many politicians are not only concerned with the volume of their speeches being uplifting, but also with making statements that will be believed by the vast majority of people. critical discourse analysis (cda) has received much attention as an important applied linguistic theory that incorporates classical theories from many disciplines, such as ethnography, psychology and linguistics. cda covers a wide range of topics, and it includes not only applied linguistic theory but also critical linguistics. it was pioneered by scholars at the university of east anglia and commenced with the publication of language as ideology (kress and hodge 1979) and language and control (fowler et al. 1979).however, there are many shortcomings and omissions in cda, and according to chilton, the neglect of cognition is referred to as the missing link in cda. xin bin(1996) argues that critical discourse analysis requires researchers to consider both social and cognitive aspects, and that both aspects need to be seen as directions for the development of critical discourse analysis. zhang hui(2018) argue that the deficiency of cda lies in the fact that the role of cognition in discourse has not been taken seriously. in this context, this article chooses proximization theory to study cda and further refine the deficiencies of cda.1.2 purposes of the researchthis paper will use theories of proximization to analyse reports related to the trade friction between the us and china, to analyse the ideologies represented by each story, and to further explain how politicians use different methods to confuse their readers. the purpose of this paper is threefold: firstly, to analyse the proximization strategies used in each news report and to identify the different linguistic strategies used in different reports; secondly, to compare the similarities and differences between the proximization strategies used by the chinese and american media and to discuss the different views expressed in the different reports. thirdly, analyse the role of proximization theory in journalism and demonstrate how helpful it is to speakers.1.3 organization of the research this study is divided into seven chapters, with the first chapter beginning with a description of the background and purpose of this study, as well as the importance and structure of the study. chapter 2 presents a detailed literature review. chapter 3 consists of four sections, the first explaining the problem to be studied, the second is the corpora of the study, the third is the collection of data and the fourth is the analysis of the data. chapters four, five and six compare three different proximization strategies used for reports related to us-china trade friction. the similarities and differences of the different strategies are analysed. chapter 7 concludes the thesis by summarising the main findings and limitations of the paper and making suggestions for future research.2.literature reviewthis chapter will introduce the definitions of proximization theory and the types ofproximization strategies, followed by a summary of previous national and international research, which will facilitate the reader's understanding of the theory and a more comprehensive understanding of this study.2.1 definitions of proximizationproximization theory, a new concept in linguistics, has gained the attention of many scholars. it not only makes it easier and faster to analyse political discourse, but also provides a new one for our language studies. it refers to the discursive strategy of making things that happen in different time periods acceptable to the general public in a negative, imperceptible way. (cap 2014 : 17). the speaker often employs a number of tactics to emphasise that something is having a negative impact on the general public and to make their actions acceptable to the general public. the speaker's main aim is to counteract the increasingly far-reaching effects of negative, foreign, unfamiliar and hostile entities on him or her (cap, 2017).chilton (2004) introduced the idea of 'proximize /proximizing'. building on chilton's ideas, cap (2006) proposed the concept of 'proximisation', in which people present temporal proximization, spatial proximization and axiological proximization according to their own position, with the aim of informing the audience about something else. cap (2006) built on chilton's idea of 'proximisation' on a detailed analysis of the speaker's discourse. after two years of research, cap (2008) combined chilton's spatial proximisation with temporal elements to develop the sta model, which he used to study the statements made by leaders during the us-iraq war. two years later, cap (2010) once again proposed a new theory that speakers would use an increasing number of value proximization strategies to make their words more convincing to listeners. whats more， axiological proximization strategies could compensate for the deficiencies caused by the lack of temporal and spatial proximization strategies. in 2018, cap improved on chilton's theory once again by proposing a theory of proximization, including temporal proximization, spatial proximization and axiological proximization.2.2 categories of proximization strategiesthe spatial-temporal-axiological proximization model put forward by cap involves a series of strategic deployment of lexical-grammatical choices, which origins from the cognitive categories of space, time and values. the core of sta model is the deictic center, which can be divided into spatial axis (upper axis), temporal axis (left and right axis) and axiological axis (front axis). in discourse space, when indicator centers are conceptualized, some indicators can be placed on different axes to highlight different ideologies, such as here the speaker actively eliminates the negative influence or hostile situation of the foreign entity, in order to promote the legalization of policy or behavior (legitimization) (cap,2014). as a discourse strategy, the proximization mainly focuses on the symbolic recognition of the entity relationship in the discourse space, that is, how the peripheral members of the discourse space project the symbols to the indicator center member（members of the deictic center) (chilton,2005).2.4 overview of previous studiesproximization theory is one of relatively new discourse analysis theories in linguistics. recently, linguists gradually realized that proximization has played an important role in cda, pragmatic and cognitive linguistics. many prominent linguists have contributed themselves to the development of the proximization theory. one of the famous leading scholar is cap from the university of lodz, poland. until to the present, he still sticks to the researches of proximization theory. for many years, plenty of academic essays and press publications have been published by him, involving mainly previous literature reviews and ongoing development of the proximization theory. the famous academic achievement is proximization: the pragmatics of symbolic distance crossing published in 2013.referencescap, p. (2006). legitimization in political discourse: a cross-disciplinaiy perspective on the modern us friction rhetoric. newcastle: cambridge scholars press.cap, p. (2008). towards the proximization model of the analysis of legitimization in political discourse. journal of pragmatics, 40(1), 17-41.cap, p. (2010). axiological aspects of proximization. journal of pragmatics, 10(42), 392-407．cap, p. (2013). proximization: the pragmatics of symbolic distance crossing. amsterdam: john benjamins.cap, p. (2014). applying cognitive pragmatics to critical discourse studies: a proximization analysis of three public space discourse. journal of pragmatics, (70): 16-30.cap, p. (2017). studying ideological worldviews in political discourse space: critical-cognitive advances in the analysis of conflict and coercion. journal of pragmatics, (108): 17-27.chilton, p. (2004). analyzing political discourse: theory and practice. london: routldge.fowler, r. (1979). language and control. london: routledgekegan paul.kress, g. (1979). language as ideology. london: routledge.辛斌（1996），语言,权力和意识形态：批评语言学，《现代外语》。

辛斌（2000），批评语言学与英语新闻语篇的批评性分析，《外语教学》。

辛斌（2012），批评话语分析中的认知话语分析，《外语教学与研究》，（4）：1-5。

2. 研究的基本内容、问题解决措施及方案

3.Research MethodologyIn this chapter, the research questions will presented firstly. The second part mainly deals with the problem of data collection, in which the Sino-US trade friction will be introduced briefly and the reasons why selected reports from the Peoples Daily and the New York Times. Finally, the procedures to conduct the research of the thesis will be interpreted.3.1 Research questionsBased on the research goals in Chapter One, the following three research questions has been put forward:(1)What are proximization strategies involved in these pieces of news reports from the People s Daily and the New York Times?(2)What are the differences and similarities of the proximization strategies employed in the Chinese and American news reports?(3)How does the use of proximization strategy reflect the ideology behind the media writers?3.2 Data collectionFor the past few years, scholars paid less attention to the study and application of proximization theory, especially for the economic news discourses. The reason why choose the Sino-U.S. trade news as the analysis text because it is not only the embodiment of economic policies, but also the political game between the two countries, which reflects the different ideologies behind the discourses. Based on the proximization theory, this study intends to analyze the official discourse characteristics of the two governments in the trade dispute between China and the United States from three dimensions of space, time and values, and to establish a model of proximization, and to explore the similarities and differences in attitudes and positions between the two sides and the constructed national image, in order to provide a new research perspective and enlightenment for the study of Sino-US trade relations and the best discourse strategy that China should adopt in trade disputes.3.3 Data analysis Research goals determines the research methods and procedures. In this chapter, based on the theoretical framework of proximization theory, the coipus retrieval tools AntConc, will be used to analyze the Sino-US trade frictionnews reports from three dimensions of spatial proximization, temporal proximization and axiological proximization to show how speakers organize languages and how different proximization strategies were employed to achieve speaker's goals and legalize laws and policies so as to demonstrate the strong explanatory power of the proximization theory to critical discourse analysis.