A Newspaper Corpus AnalysisChina and Europe in The Papers

The New York Times – aprox. 25.000 words

The Guardian – aprox. 20.000 words The Telegraph – aprox. 20.000 words

In total, aprox. 65.000 words.

How corpora are built around the issue: China-EU Relations

How do these journals see both and how they do see their relations

Wordlists – 1. The NYTThe Most Frequent

Word-forms in written texts

(Cambridge Grammar of English, pp. 12)

1 The2 To3 And4 Of5 A6 In7 Was8 It9 I10 He11 That12 She13 For14 On15 Her16 You17 Is18 With19 His20 Had

Wordlists – 2. The Telegraph

The Most Frequent Word-forms in written texts

(Cambridge Grammar of English, pp. 12)

1 The2 To3 And4 Of5 A6 In7 Was8 It9 I10 He11 That12 She13 For14 On15 Her16 You17 Is18 With19 His20 Had

Wordlists – 3. The Guardian

The Most Frequent Word-forms in written texts

(Cambridge Grammar of English, pp. 12)

1 The2 To3 And4 Of5 A6 In7 Was8 It9 I10 He11 That12 She13 For14 On15 Her16 You17 Is18 With19 His20 Had

Analysing the Respective Concordances The New York Times:

“said” – reporting. Attributing the responsability of a certain fact or event to something somebody or something said. Distances the reporter from the facts he’s reporting.

“China” – Obviously among the “Top20”. – Europe? The Telegraph:

“by” – tells us who or what did or provocated something – the agent? (“«emerging market economy» was invented by the World Bank”; “a big gap left by the collapse in consumer confidence”)

The Guardian: “will” – modal verb, working in conditional clauses (“if they are, it will be our

problem as well as theirs”) or as reflecting a prospective (“we will achieve more”). As we can see, this modal is found in the direct speech, but sometimes we can also find it used by the author: “And Beijing will have a far bigger say than it did in 1944.” – this is a general truth but it also reflects the opinion of the author - subjectivity. (bold)

As – used as comparison of similarity (“be roughly the same size as those of the United States”); as a temporal conjunction (“As I write” – used as while); as a consequential conjunction (“The test of any political system is how it withstands hard times. The Chinese system, as it has emerged over the past 30 years, has not yet stood that test.” – used as because) – reflects also subjectivity.

CLUSTERS

Relevant Clusters In the New York Times In the Telegraph In The Guardian

Relevant CLUSTERS IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

In Europe : 19 times Bad things happen in Europe, or particularly in Europe: bank failures;

creditworthy companies cannot get money in Europe; etc. … And Europe : 17 times

United States and Europe – 11x (1) Asia and Europe – 2x China and Europe – 2x Middle East and Europe – 1x Alaska and Europe – 1x Europe and:

Europe and: 12 times Asia, United States, South America, Japan, China

(1): This reflects the contrast and alliance between the EU and Asia on one hand, and between the EU and the US, on the other hand. There is a clear division between the Asian and the American blocks.

To Europe: 8 times

This is a very important cluster, because “TO” Europe we have: the spread of the crisis which had origin in the US; the slowdown of sales (following the US); exports to Europe were down 20%; etc. …

So, what we have coming to Europe is all negative.

Clusters in The Telegraph In the Telegraph it is very interesting to remark that there are no

relevant clusters at all. Interesting also is that among all those not relevant clusters there’s “from Europe”, not “to Europe”, which could show us something more if there would be more articles under analysis.

The Telegraph is in Europe, this does also change the point of view.

Related to the cluster “and Europe”, it is interesting that Europe is only related to America or the US, never to Asia nor China.

Clusters in The Guardian And Europe (12x): the same as in the NYT. Asia, China, the US

Europe and (11x): idem.

In Europe (6x): except 1 reference to the “inevitable recession in Europe”, there are no other negative perspectives of what is happening in the continent.

“To Europe” is not really relevant in The Guardian, relevant is rather “Europe is”: “Europe is incapable”, “Europe is now the key to the continuing strength of western values” Europe is assumed as being and doing.

Related to Europe the NYT does not directly use modal verbs. However, associated to “China” there are some modals: would (5), can (2), might (2), must (2), cannot, could. In general we see that there’s a huge expectancy regarding China. “China will not be a savior to the global economy, taking up the slack from

the slumping United States, Europe and Japan, as some had hoped.” “China will suffer as the global downturn deepens” “they said that China would need to work more closely with other

economies, including the United States and Europe, to overcome the current financial crisis.”

In recent years, some Chinese experts have written analyses about the inevitability of an American decline and how China must prepare to manage it. But in the face of the current crisis, most Chinese analysts say China is nowhere near ready yet to stand as a superpower.

Need (26x) – “President Obama will need to quickly lay out his vision of the military this country needs to keep safe and to prevail over 21st-century threats.”

Modals in The NYT

Modals in The Guardian Will (66x) – “China will have the world’s second largest economy by

2025”, “the strategic partnership with China will keep this new dawn bright”

Must (26x) – “Europe and China must ‘swim together’…” Can (41x) – “Any Chinese lawyer can tell you how far away the country

is from having an independent judiciary” Could (42x) – “if they fail, it could be war” Cannot (14x) – cannot [afford] (2x) – “We cannot afford not to be

interested in the progress of its uncharted, incremental economic and political reforms”

Need ()

Need (39x) – “the need to stabilize economies”; “we need a global vision”

Be able to (5x) – “One [EU] that will be able to forge a partnership of equals”

The Use of Evaluative Words/ Subjectivity in Papers

IN:

•The Guardian

•The Telegraph

•The New York Post

Evaluative Language (1) Perplexed [leaders] Terrified (e.g. “Policy makers are terrified”;

“Asia's terrified financial markets”) Panicked (e.g. “as panicked European leaders

tried…”) Concerned (?) g+nyt Shattered “the shattered Western economy” Destroyed “The manufacturing heart in the

Pearl River area near Hong Kong is being destroyed”

Marginalised Fragmented (e.g. “[the NIC] foresees a

fragmented world”) Hobbled (e.g. “European Union will be a 'hobbled

giant' by 2025”) Compromised (e.g. “Brown remains a deeply

compromised figure as a credible pro-European”) Irrationally Desperately Dramatically

Scare-mongering

Emotionally (negatively) loaded adjectives

Evaluative Language (2) “Pigs” (the assumption that Portugal, Italy, Greece or

Spain, the much derided "Pigs") Derided Unrivalled (“no longer the unrivalled superpower” [the

US]) hard-nosed (e.g. “This hard-nosed power [China] does not

share the west's enthusiasms”) Probably Certainly Predictably Realistic Optimistic Pessimistic Unexpected (e.g. “The financial crisis has levelled the

international playing field in unexpected ways”) Unpredictable Unworkable Uncontrollable Unstable Incapable

Unavoidable Inevitable Inevitably

Uncertainty

Loss of Control

Pejorative Adjectives

Evaluative Language (3) Stable Renewabl

e Sustainabl

e Abominabl

e

Precisely Incredibly Significant

ly Scarcely Rarely

Evaluative Language (4) Apparently Seems Hardly – “and since Chinese consumers' instinctive reaction to a crisis is hardly to

spend more” Acutely Crudely Wildly Relatively Deeply Profoundly Highly Widely Fully

Vague Language Vague Language

Besides those adverbs mentioned above▪ A lot▪ Lots▪ Very▪ Almost▪ Rather▪ A bit▪ Quite▪ Rather

These, the NYT uses most

Closing remarks Double negation

3,000 yuan a year (£300) is not unusually low

Relatively certain that the EU will be losing clout by 2025 2025: the end of US dominance European Union will be 'hobbled giant' by 2025

This is never mentioned in the NYT, but often in The Guardian and the Telegraphy – specially in The Guardian

Conclusion The US has hidden fears concerning China, although they

shouldn’t, they could take profit from the new growing market. The US representatives do not cooperate with China as the EU does, frequently sending representatives to Asia.

Europe is accompanying the eastern-directed evolution and working on that since 1978 and the US aren’t.

A lack of factuality and certainness characterises the NYT vague language around the issue.

The vitality and dynamism of The Guardian provokes the blossoming of evaluative adjectives, nouns and verbs among their articles.

The Telegraph must possibly be seen as a more conservative paper, which restrains not only literary flowering but also the amount of articles. It was by far harder to find articles on telegraph.co.uk than it was on nytimes.com or guardian.co.uk.

Conclusion (2) The US, whilst fearing the rise of China,

minimizes the effects of a powerful China, saying it would never be a Super-Power to be taken seriously. Dur to this, we might assume, China and the world crisis involving China is seen from afar, from a distance which is so huge that we could imagine the US to be on another planet. They do have, indeed, other problems to resolve, specially internally.