Ecological Critical Discourse Analysis of Chinese and American Media News Reports on Nuclear Wastewater

Abstract

In recent years, environmental pollution has been the focus of attention in various countries. Experts and scholars began to study environmental pollution from different fields, and ecological linguistics came into being. Ecocritical discourse analysis (CDA) is an important branch of ecolinguistics, which analyzes the use of language from the perspective of the ecological environment of language. Since the leakage of Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan, the news of Fukushima nuclear wastewater has aroused wide attention. Based on the three-dimensional analysis framework of Fairclough (2010), this study makes a comparative analysis of Chinese and American nuclear wastewater news reports from the perspective of ecocritical discourse analysis, explores the respective positions and ideological differences between Chinese and American nuclear wastewater reports from the aspects of title, vocabulary selection and theme, and cultivates readers' critical thinking. Finally, it can improve readers' ability of discourse comparison and analysis and their awareness of protecting language ecological environment.