TY - JOUR
T1 - Discursive constructions of scientific (Un)certainty about the health risks of China's air pollution
T2 - A corpus-assisted discourse study
AU - Liu, Ming
AU - Zhang, Yiheng
N1 - Funding Information:
The writing of this paper was supported by the National Social Science Fund Project of China (ID No.: 17CYY065) . I would like to thank the reviewers for their critical comments on the earlier version of this article.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2018/5
Y1 - 2018/5
N2 - This article gives a corpus-assisted discourse study of the representations of the health risks of China's air pollution (2011–2014) in Chinese and Anglo-American English-language newspapers with a view to examining their particular ways of constructing scientific (un)certainty about health risks. Findings suggest that although health information has been addressed in the two groups of newspapers, the Anglo-American English-language newspapers prefer to amplify and dramatize the certainty about health risks through such discursive strategies as predication, nomination, and the rhetoric of quantification, while the Chinese English-language newspaper is inclined to highlight the uncertainty about health risks through such discursive strategies as particularizing the Chinese context, complicating the causes of health problems, and arguing for more scientific tests.
AB - This article gives a corpus-assisted discourse study of the representations of the health risks of China's air pollution (2011–2014) in Chinese and Anglo-American English-language newspapers with a view to examining their particular ways of constructing scientific (un)certainty about health risks. Findings suggest that although health information has been addressed in the two groups of newspapers, the Anglo-American English-language newspapers prefer to amplify and dramatize the certainty about health risks through such discursive strategies as predication, nomination, and the rhetoric of quantification, while the Chinese English-language newspaper is inclined to highlight the uncertainty about health risks through such discursive strategies as particularizing the Chinese context, complicating the causes of health problems, and arguing for more scientific tests.
KW - Air pollution
KW - Corpus-assisted discourse study
KW - Critical discourse analysis
KW - Health risks
KW - Media discourse
KW - Smog
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85042217937&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.langcom.2018.01.006
DO - 10.1016/j.langcom.2018.01.006
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85042217937
SN - 0271-5309
VL - 60
SP - 1
EP - 10
JO - Language and Communication
JF - Language and Communication
ER -