Corpus-based Discourse-Historical Analysis of the Topic of “Harmony” in Sino-German Media (基于语料库的中德媒体中“和谐”话题的话语-历史分析)

Abstract

English abstract: “Harmony” constitutes a fundamental component of the core socialist values in China. To delve into the discourse construction characteristics surrounding the theme of “harmony” in both Chinese and German media, I selected texts from the mainstream media: the People’s Daily Online（German edition）and Süddeutsche Zeitung, which engage in discussions on the concept of “harmony” . Employing a dual approach of informativeness and corpus analysis, I anchored my study on Ruth Wodak’s discourse-historical approach as the theoretical foundation. Initially, I conducted a macro-level analysis of the sub-topics associated with “harmony” in both Chinese and German media. Subsequently, I delved into the micro-level discourse strategies. Finally, I elucidated the disparities in the discourse construction of the “harmony” theme in Chinese and German media, attributing these distinctions to their respective socio-historical contexts. The findings illuminated that within the Chinese media milieu, “harmony” is interconnected with macro-level sub-topics such as “national security” and “social development”, carrying a positive semantic prosody. Conversely, in the German media context, “harmony” is correlated with sub-topics like “musical performance” and “sports activities”. From an individual standpoint, it maintains a positive semantic prosody. However, when broached within the political context, it often involves negations and negative vocabularies. These variations are tied to Germany’s individualistic culture and China’s traditional cultural backdrop. These results underscore the significance of guiding individuals to comprehend the concept of core values from both Chinese and German perspectives in diverse contexts, including broad cultural exchanges and specific scenarios like German language reading instruction.

Chinese (simplified) abstract: “和谐”是我国社会主义核心价值观的一个要素。为了探讨“和谐”这一话题在中德媒体中的话语构建特点，笔者以主流媒体人民网（德文版）和《南德意志报》中涉及“和谐”的报道文本为研究语料，采用信息贡献度和语料库相结合的方法，以Ruth Wodak历史语篇分析法为理论工具，先从宏观层面分析中德媒体有关“和谐”的子主题，再从微观层面探讨其中的话语策略，最后根据社会历史语境来阐述中德媒体对于“和谐”这一话题的话语构建差异及其背后的文化成因。研究结果显示，“和谐”在中国媒体语境中与“国家安全”“社会发展”等宏观层面的子话题相关，具备积极语义韵；在德国媒体语境中，“和谐”与“音乐演奏”“体育活动”等子话题相连，从个人层面出发进行话语建构时具备积极语义韵，但在政治层面常与否定、消极词汇共同使用。这些差异与德国的个人主义和中国的传统文化有关。这表明，在大到中德文化交流，小到德语阅读教学中，都要引导受众从中德视角来理解核心价值观概念。

Keywords: 语料库语言学；信息贡献度；历史语篇分析；和谐 [corpus linguistic; informativeness; discourse-historical analysis; harmony]