A contrastive study of discoursal emotions between China’s and American newspapers from the perspective of Socio-emotional Theory: The case of the reports on Hong Kong National Security Law

Abstract

At present, there is an emotional turn in news researches, however, there are not many theories dedicated to the studies of emotions in news discourse. Therefore, by employing corpus analysis, this paper proposes Socio-emotional Theory, and contrasts the emotions in the news discourse on Hong Kong National Security Law between China’s and American newspapers. The results show that as for the themes of emotional discourse, China’s newspapers emphasize national security, social stability, anti-interference in China’s internal affairs, the positive roles of the law, the destructive nature of Hong Kong separatists, and their unreasonable resistance to the law; while American newspapers highlight their worry and fear about the law. Secondly, in terms of the distribution of emotional semantic categories, China’s newspapers talk more about confidence and happiness; however, American newspapers display more fear, sadness, worry, anger, and disappointment. As for ideologies, China’s newspapers show support for the law with less worry, while American newspapers display their opposition to the law with worry and anger, and these differences in ideologies actually reflect the conflict between China’s Democratic Centralism and western Populism. This study can provide enlightenment for the construction of a harmonious international discourse system, expand the ontological components and interpretation boundaries of discourse analysis theories, and promote the researches on emotions of news discourse.