1 Comparative News Analysis The choice of The Taipei Times and The China Daily for this discourse

analysis was not accidental. The thing is that both of the news supplying agencies stand among the most influential news making actors in the Asian media market and, being available in English, not only do they cover the Asian audience, but they also broadcast their news around the whole world. The content represented on their web sites allows people from different parts of the world to understand most of the current socio-political, economic, and cultural processes that take place in the region. Moreover, it allows considering these processes from a different non-Western perspective. Of course, the content of The Taipei Times and The China Daily is ideologically biased to different extents, but it makes it even more interesting, especially in terms of the current analysis. The problem of the Diaoyutai Islands sovereignty is chosen as an event for comparison. The territorial confrontation between China, Japan and Taiwan takes place in the diplomatic sphere and appears to be quite topical for all the parties of the dispute. China and Japan are the main rivals in their struggle for becoming regional leaders in Asia. In turn, Taiwan, being one of the most economically developed countries in Asia, tries to preserve its influence in the region and seeks to become a decent competitor for such giants as China and Japan. Due to this struggle for regional dominance, the ideological component of media discourse in these countries becomes especially vivid. The typical ideological discourse of We (good) and They (the Other, bad) described by Van Dijk (2009) becomes especially evident in the media content, due to the current escalation of confrontation over the status of the Diaoyutai Islands. The event has not yet achieved its final stage; therefore, it is still very relevant to consider its press coverage through the prism of discourse analysis.

2 The theoretical background of this analysis is formed on the basis of Van Dijks critical research into the basic tenets of the theory of discourse. According to the scholar, the concept of discourse means any text in conjunction with all the extra linguistic factors (Van Dijk 1985). Van Dijk offers to view media texts as an independent kind of discourse. The key feature of this approach is its focus on the study of the essence of the process of mass communication and namely on a variety of messages concealed in any media text. Any text of mass communication must be studied in the context of specific social and cultural activities, that is, texts must be analyzed in terms of their own structural organization, as well as from the viewpoints of different linguistic and social sciences. In his analysis of news as a phenomenon of mass communication that inevitably bears specific ideology, van Dijk (2009) examines relationships that exist between news messages and their structure, and the processes of their production and perception. Moreover, the scholar describes the main characteristics of news making activities, the impact of social processes on news production and their understanding. Van Dijk (2007) tries to identify the social status of those who are engaged in the production of news, the links between them in terms of their institutional and other structural relationships. Thus, discourse analysis allows considering the process of creating news as a process that absorbs different social and cognitive acts and policies. However, it appears to be quite hard to define the processes of news production and perception clearly: some characteristics associated with the ideas of race, class or institutional differences cannot have any direct reflection at the level of topics, structures or stylistic characteristics. The same idea can be expressed with regard to such characteristics as the degree of influence of different interest groups or the degree of some ideologys manifestation in specific text (Van Dijk 2007).

3 In the modern theory of discourse, the sphere of mass communication is considered as one of the preferred objects for analysis. This peculiarity can be explained by the fact that the messages produced by the media perfectly fit the idea of ideological interpellation of power among the audience as the subjects of communication. Discourse analysis of mass media texts is virtually reduced to the analysis of ideological messages produced by the media. The analytical methods introduced by Roland Barthes appear to be still relevant in the sphere of ideological discourse analysis. According to Barthes (1972), any news message can be considered as a specific case confirming the idea that the process of depoliticizing and naturalizing ideology takes place within the process of mass communication. That is, all the realms of our daily life depend on the presentation of relationships between an individual and society created by the ruling class (ideology) (Barthes 1972). Many of Barthes followers use this approach as an axiom. For instance, Fowler (1991) analyzes the language of news as a special case of language enriched with almost invisible but rigid ideology. According to this viewpoint, news represents the world by means of language. Since any language is a semiotic code, it imposes some hierarchy of values of social and economic origin (Fowler 1991). According to Fowler (1991), the media support the dominant cultural order even when they outwardly seem to oppose it. For example, an article criticizing bureaucracy in public hospitals is still written in accordance with bureaucratic managerial discourse that turns people into patients and cases, that is, people are turned into limp objects of manipulation (Fowler 1991). To my mind, the most consistent methodology of discourse analysis is described by Van Dijk, as it is more universal and suitable for the analysis of any type of media texts. This type of analysis operates on the basis of qualitative methods that allow viewing any text as a

4 combination of different semantic, stylistic, and rhetoric compounds. At the same time, Van Dijk (2009) indicates the presence of some components in any text, which are used to appeal to prior knowledge or experience of readers. The process of identifying these omitted connections between different concepts and their actual statements can also be considered as an important task of semiotic analysis that helps find out how the processes of perceiving information depend on existing knowledge and beliefs about the world. Comparing media coverage of one and the same event in the Chinese and Taiwanese press, it is possible to trace a high level of ideological bias in the Chinese Internet newspaper. The very title of the article There Should be no Provocation over Diaoyu Islands in the China Daily indicates the position of the government of the country. Chinas position on the conflict resolution does not represent any consensus that would not be in favor of official Beijing. Moreover, the newspapers tendency towards supporting governmental policies is confirmed by references to governmental officials claims given in the article: BEIJING - Air defense sirens wailed at 9:18 am Tuesday in Shenyang, capital of Northeast China's Liaoning province, kicking off nationwide activities marking the 81st anniversary of the Japanese invasion of northeast China (Xinhua 2012). The object invasion in the quoted sentence modifies Chinas negative position regarding the territorial interests of Japan. All further references are based only on the statements of official representatives of China (for example, the Foreign Ministry spokesman). It is known that major media providers in China are state-controlled (Baran and Davis 2009). The China Daily does not turn out to be an exception in this case. The ideological position of the party is seen in many other stylistic, rhetorical, and semantic peculiarities of the article. For example, the words purchased is used in this article several times. This word refers the reader to Japans plans of nationalization of the islands.

5 However, the Chinese government is obviously inclined to consider this plan to be illegal. This idea is imposed on the audience by highlighting the word purchased by quotation marks. Thus, the author tries to persuade readers that the purchase must be considered as an illegal act of the international level. The word marked with quotes immediately acquires a negative connotation and denotes all the policies of Japan in the sphere of the islands independence as negative and illegal. The same happens to the word nationalization that also contains a negative connotation being emphasized by quotation marks. Chinas negative position is also expressed by a lot of other words possessing negative meaning: occupy, invasion, aggression, and so on. In this article, the idea of the Other offered by Van Dijk (2009) has its discourse representation in a constantly repeated wordcombination right-wing activists. The word right-wing also contains a negative connotation in the article and means some radical side of the dispute. Not only does the word right-wing denote some group of people in Japan, but it also means some ideology antagonistic to the communist ideology in China. The article Shallow Waters Get to Deeper Issue in the Taipei Times is a kind of response to the foregoing article in the China Daily. The thing is that the article shows the viewpoint of another party of the confrontation Taiwan. This party appears to be the weakest one, as its influence in the region is less visible than that of China and Japan. The article criticizes Taiwan officials for being too moderate during negotiations: Ma's moderate approach will not result in Taiwan becoming a party to the dispute (Chiang 2012). The attribute moderate means a more tactful description of Mas being ineffective. However, the absence of any harsh critical elements in this text does not mean that its discourse is not based on any ideology. It can be assumed that the author represents political opposition ideology of liberal character that tends to avoid any

6 sharp pot shots. This difference can be illustrated by the example of the word nationalize used in this text. In contrast to the article in the China Daily, this word is used without quotation marks. It means that it is used without any negative connotation towards Japans rights to the islands. Moreover, the author of the article uses references to previously agreed regulations associated with the status of the islands, and quotes representatives of different parties of the dispute. The most vivid negative reflection on the problem and Chinas role in it is shown in the utterance: ... we need the backing of both Japan and the US to prevent China from elbowing in on Taiwan's fishery resources. What is the sense in giving the thief a place at the table? (Chiang 2012). The word thief is used figuratively, but it obviously presents China as the most intolerable party of the dispute. Thus, the conclusion can be drawn that both of the articles reflect the political and ideological situations in China and Taiwan. The analysis of the first article reveals discourse peculiarities that totally support all the policies of the ruling party in China. This characteristic can be explained by the authoritarian regime in China, which is considered by many Western analysts as the one limiting freedom of speech in the country (Bennett 2012). The perspective of Taiwan is less sharp and tends to be more objective. However, the ideological background of the author is still visible. The authors criticism is simply softened by the use of a variety of stylistic devices that make the article seem more objective and less lopsided.

7 References Baran, SJ and Davis, DK 2009 The rise of media theory in the age of propaganda, in Mass Communication Theory: Foundations, ferment, and future, Wadsworth, pp. 71-94. Barthes, R 1972, Mythologies, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Bennett, I 2011, Media Censorship in China. Available from: <http://www.cfr.org/china/mediacensorship-china/p11515> [24 September 2012]. Chiang, HC 2012, Shallow Waters Get to Deeper Issue. Available form: <http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2012/09/16/2003542862/1> [24 September 2012]. Esarey, A 2006 Speak no evil: Mass media control in contemporary China A Freedom House special report. Fowler, R 1991, Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the British Press, Routledge, New York. Van Dijk, TA 2009 News, Discourse, and Ideology, in K Wahl-Jorgensen and T Hanitzsch (eds), The Handbook of Journalism Studies, Routledge, pp. 191-204. Van Dijk, TA 1985, Discourse and Communication: New Approaches to the Analysis of Mass Media Discourse and Communication, Walter de Gruyter. Xinhua 2012, There should be no Provocation over Diaoyu Islands. Available form: <http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-09/18/content_15766489.htm> [24 September 2012].