Journal of China in Global and Comparative Perspectives

Abstract: Discourse, as the smallest language unit, has drawn a lot of attention in the social context. At present, the research on discourse has gone beyond the sphere of basic language features, focusing on hidden ideologies and deep-seated cultural factors. Norman Fairclough interprets discourse analysis as ‘a research frame on the relationship between language, power and ideology’. Corpus-based discourse analysis is a methodology combining qualitative and quantitative research, which is original in terms of both research methods and perspectives. Since 9/11, terrorism has become a significant research topic in social science, including discursive construction of the war on terror from a linguistic perspective. Such research has mainly focused on public knowledge about the measures taken by the American government after 9/11, the discourse strategies of the war on terror of political leaders, the discursive construction of the media surrounding terrorism and so on. The People’s Daily from China and The Sun from the UK were chosen to be the data sources as each has the highest circulation respectively in its own country, which may represents the popular worldview of the populations. Yufang Qian’s book explores how The Sun and The People’s Daily constructed their discourses around terrorism before and after the events of that day, combining corpus approaches with critical discourse analysis and affording an excellent example of a comparative study combined with such analysis.