On the issue of using the features of the Chinese-language media discourse in teaching Chinese

Fomenko Evgeniia Senior Educator, Department of Chinese Language, Moscow City Pedagogical University 127238, Russia, Moscow, Dmitrovskoe highway, 34, building 2, office 204 folaoshe@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Popova Anastasiia Senior Educator, Department of Chinese Language, Moscow City Pedagogical University 105064, Russia, g. Moscow, per. Malyi Kazennyi, 5-B, of. 507 anysta@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction

Against the background of globalization, which has affected absolutely all aspects of modern life, language is becoming not only a way of communication and a means of transmitting information, but also a tool that influences its recipient. As noted by E. G. Tareva, L. G. Vikulova, I. V. Makarova, the deepening of these processes, their multi-vector and multi-variant implementation lead to both objectively positive results and complication of international contacts, determine the problematic and often conflicting nature of interaction between representatives of different cultures, different value systems and priorities ^{[1, p. 399]}. The same situation is observed in the media sphere. Various media outlets, providing their audience with new information, seek to influence the perception of the material by the reader or viewer in order to achieve the formation of a certain public opinion, change the point of view already existing in society or comply with censorship requirements. S. N.Plotnikova considers discourse to be a "weapon of influence" ^{[2, p. 6]}, therefore, news discourse should also be considered as a "weapon" that can be used to form a certain picture of the world in the reader's mind, as well as as a means of achieving specific goals or countering verbal aggression from the outside ^{[3, p. 199]}. In the XXI century. China, like many countries, is pursuing a strategy of "globalization" in which the media is a means of spreading the Chinese "agenda" in the world. To achieve this goal, China is taking certain steps in the media sphere. In order to maintain a sense of Chinese ethnic identity and bring their behavior in line with the national policy of the country in which they are located, almost all Chinese-language media in Southeast Asia fulfill a dual mission: first, they act as a local news bureau to transmit government regulations and reports to ethnic Chinese; second, as Chinese-speaking The media are called upon to protect the interests of the Chinese ^{[4, p. 46]}. Thus, the coverage of local and international news in Chinese-language media, on the one hand, helps strengthen ties between the Chinese and the local population, on the other, provides foreign ethnic Chinese with an opportunity to express their opinion about events taking place in the world, which does not always coincide with official Beijing.

According to Chinese researcher Mei Yan, foreign Chinese-language media play a very important role in shaping the global Chinese-language media landscape ^{[5, p. 67]}. If we talk about global influence on the media, China attaches great importance to carefully shaping its international image in an attempt to achieve favorable results for itself. In the language of Chinese politics, the diasporic Chinese-language media are compared to "a ship that China can borrow to go to the open sea" (借船出海海 ji jiuu海海海 chūhǎi) ^{[6, p. 50]}.

Agreeing with J. J. Alvaro's statement that scientists from various disciplines are now studying not only what China says, but also how it says it ^{[7, p. 275]}, the authors of this work considered it appropriate to investigate how Chinese-language media in East and Southeast Asia build the discourse of their publications, which linguistic tools are used to solve the tasks set by the editorial board, and how this can be used in the development of communicative competence when teaching interpretation and translation in a pair of Chinese – Russian languages.

The formation of this competence, according to E. G. Tareva, occurs during the assignment of the verbal and semantic code of the studied language to students - the linguistic picture of the world, leading to the formation of linguistic consciousness ^{[8, p. 42]}. The authors have built the work in the following main areas, defining them as research objectives: 1) development of criteria for the selection of Chinese-language media and news articles to compile a representative sample during the planned research; 2) analysis of the structure, vocabulary, grammar, means of artistic expression of the texts under consideration; 3) identification of patterns that determine the features of the discourse of articles of a particular media; 4) description of the targeted strategies used by selected media in their news 5) conclusion on the possibility of using Chinese-language media from different countries in the process of teaching Chinese.

Literature review

When embarking on this study, the authors turned to publications on this topic. In the scientific field, there are studies on certain aspects of the journalistic style of the Chinese language. In particular, V. I. Gorelov's fundamental work is devoted to the stylistics of the modern Chinese language ^[9], E. N. Orlov considered the grammar of the journalistic style of the Chinese language (Orlov E. N. Grammatical features of the journalistic style of the Chinese language : dissertation... Candidate of Philological Sciences : 02/10/22. – Moscow, 1985. – 149 p.), T. N. Nikitina studied the syntax of the Chinese journalistic text ^[10], S. A. Sanzhimitypova analyzed the stylistic features of the language of the modern Chinese press (Sanzhimitypova S.A. Stylistic features of the language of the modern Chinese press : dissertation ... Candidate of Philological Sciences : 02/10/22 / S. A. Sanzhimitypova; [Place of protection: St. Petersburg State University]. - St. Petersburg, 2007. 155 p.), Yu. G. Lemeshko in her work focused on the features of the language of the Chinese socio-political text (Lemeshko Yu. G. The language of the Chinese socio-political text : Syntactic and stylistic features : dissertation ... Candidate of Philological Sciences : 02/10/22. – C-Pb., 2001. – 166 p.), O. I. Kalinin studied the linguistic and pragmatic characteristics of the image political media text on the material of the Chinese media (Kalinin O.I. Linguistic and pragmatic characteristics of the image political media text : on the material of the Chinese media : dissertation ... Candidate of Philological Sciences : 02/10/19 / Kalinin Oleg Igorevich; [Place of protection: Military. un-t]. – M., 2017. – 174 p.). Articles containing an overview of evaluative vocabulary in Chinese media texts ^[11] and a critical discourse analysis of Chinese media texts on foreign policy topics are of interest ^[12]. In recent years, a large number of articles have appeared on the linguistic aspects of the formation of the image of foreign states or their leaders in the Chinese media ^[13-17], however, in our opinion, their weaknesses in many cases include either the limited illustrative material or the absence of original Chinese texts, which does not allow creating a distinct linguistic picture and evaluating the language tools used. The most significant disadvantage of these publications, in our opinion, is that only the Chinese media were taken for analysis. The authors did not find any works comparing the linguistic techniques of the discourse of Chinese-speaking media resources in China and Southeast Asian countries, as well as considering the possibility of using texts of this kind in teaching Chinese. This study is intended to partially fill this gap in sinological linguodidactics.

Research methods

Taking as a basis the definition of the text by Russian researchers A. G. Danilova and O. V. Mitina as a block of information completed in semantic terms, the subject of research in which its plot or emotional content, the context of its generation, social characteristics of communicators, their intentions, etc., as well as the meanings generated by the joints of these layers can act ^{[18, p. 224]}, we can argue that the discourse of news publications undoubtedly deserves close attention from not only linguists, translators, but also educators. In the study of various types of discourse, as in teaching a foreign language, various methods can be used, in particular, narrative analysis (what is said?), discourse analysis (how is it said?), intent analysis (why is it said?), conversational analysis (by whom and to whom is it said?) ^{[19, p. 224]}. In our study, to solve problems 1-4, discourse analysis was chosen as the main method, which is defined by A. Ya. Sarna as a set of analytical methods for interpreting various kinds of texts or statements as products of people's speech activity carried out in specific socio-political circumstances and cultural and historical conditions ^[20].

In this article, using discourse analysis, the linguistic features of materials on foreign policy topics published in electronic versions of Chinese-language (Putonghua, Huayu) publications of a number of Southeast Asian countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines), as well as Hong Kong are investigated. The authors have attempted to solve the following problem: using limited material devoted to one problem – the Middle East crisis, to identify the specifics of the content and form of information presentation in the Chinese-language media under consideration, based on which to draw some applied conclusions regarding the expediency of using relevant texts in the framework of teaching a practical Chinese language course, in particular, to work with texts on social and cultural issues.political topics.

When choosing the subject of publications, the authors were guided by the fact that materials for contextual analysis should meet the following criteria: 1) the unity of the topic; 2) a relatively narrow time period; 3) the use of standard Chinese in order to avoid serious distortions in the analysis of the content. Based on the above criteria, the authors chose the topic of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, while the determining factor was that its next escalation in October 2023 aroused increased interest around the world and received widespread coverage in the press, including the Chinese-speaking one. This made it possible to compare the approaches of different media outlets to informing their audience about current issues, in this case related to the situation in the Middle East.

As a kind of "starting point", the massive mainland publication "Huanqiu Shibao" (环球时时, circulation 2.1 million copies), owned by the Chinese state media holding "Renmin Zhibao" (人民日, circulation 1.5 million copies) and specializing in coverage of international topics, was taken.

For contextual, typological analysis and comparison, electronic versions of the following Chinese-language media outlets outside mainland China were used:

1. Harian Indonesia ("Harian Indonesia") is an Indonesian daily newspaper with the longest continuous history among local Chinese–language publications. Since 2007, it has been published in cooperation with the Malaysian newspaper Sin Chew Daily and with editorial support from its side;

2. ("Nanyang Siang Pau", "eNanyang") is one of the oldest and most influential daily newspapers in Malaysia, focusing on local ethnic Chinese and the population of neighboring Singapore. In the 2010s, its paper version was printed in over 100,000 copies.;

3. 菲律宾商报 ("Huilippin Siong Po", "Philippine Commercial News") is a daily newspaper published in the Philippines since 1919. In 1995, it became one of the first Chinese–language media to launch its website;

4. 龍吟虎嘯 ("Longyin Huxiao") or 東網 ("Dongwan") is a Hong Kong Internet information resource owned by the publication of the Oriental Daily News.

To solve the fifth problem, the authors used a linguodidactic analysis, which assumes the end result of identifying the potential for using the type of texts under study as educational material based on such approaches as informative, linguistic, developmental, cultural, psychological, educational and methodological. In recognizing the importance of the latter approach, the authors agree with E. Ya. Grigorieva, E. I. Cherkashina, who consider it to determine the introduction, consolidation and activation of units of national and cultural content specific to the language being studied, extracted from texts read in the classroom [15:137].

Results and discussion

For this study, the authors analyzed a total of about 100 articles, on the basis of which the following features of the media of China, Hong Kong, as well as publications published in Chinese for the Chinese-speaking population of Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines were highlighted.

I. 环球时时 (pall. "Huanqiu shibao"), China.

1) The combination of the prescribed line with the author's opinion.

As Joshua Kurlantzik notes, Huanqiu Shibao, controlled by the People's Daily, always strongly supports the Chinese authorities, although it often reports or writes editorials on sensitive topics that the People's Daily usually does not touch ^{[21, p. 159]}. The results of the analysis of publications in this media on the topic of the Middle East crisis prove that the authors of "Hunqiu Shibao", as a rule, are not limited to reflecting the factual side of events, which allows us to share Kurlantzik's point of view.

Examples:

Analyzing the above examples 1-2, we see that they not only made a clear political line corresponding to the position of official Beijing (联合国在关键时刻无法保障基本的国际人道主义 Liánhéguó guānjiàn shíkè wúfǎ zài bǎozhàng jīběn de guójì réndào zhǔyì "the UN is not capable in moments of crisis to ensure compliance with basic international humanitarian principles"), but educational, commenting or illustrating it using emotionally expressive expressions: 浸染着无辜平民的鲜血，是罪恶的 jìnrǎnzhe wúgū píngmín de xiānxiě, Shi zuì'è de "committed a crime and stained his hands with the blood of the innocent victims", 只有招架之功，没有还手之力 zhǐyǒu zhāojià zhī gōng, lì zhī méiyǒu huánshǒu "can only defend, not having the strength to strike back".

2) Enhancement of expression with the help of evaluative vocabulary.

In many cases, journalists not only postulate their position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict directly, but also noticeably strengthen it with the help of appropriate linguistic means.

Examples:

Examples 3-4 demonstrate the use of evaluative vocabulary by the authors of articles to express a negative attitude towards the described situation. In the first case, indulging mutual hatred and thirst for revenge with the help of epithets is compared to a severe and even fatal wound to the public conscience, which will have far-reaching consequences: "let crawl" 任由...蔓延 rèn yóu mànyán, 人类良知的伤口 rénlèi liángzhī de shāngkǒu "wound on the conscience of humanity," 人类良知的死结 rénlèi liángzhī de sǐjié "fatal to the conscience" 埋下祸根 mái xià huògēn "will produce poisonous sprouts".

In example 4, using verbs with violent overtones 竭力撮合 j iélì cuòhé "to push with all my might", 拉拢 l a l ǒ ng "to drag in", the actions of the United States are described, leading the peace process away from the path that China considers right.

3) Following the high standards of the literary language.

One of the linguistic features of the articles in Huanqiu Shibao is the presence of expressions characteristic of the language of the educated class, which are used by correspondents of this publication. In particular, there are many words and grammatical constructions in the texts that go beyond the lexical minimum used by most mass media aimed at the general reader.

Examples:

In examples 5 and 6, one can see the rather rare construction 既有....加 jìyǒu...jiā "[and] have ... and ...", as well as the union 尚且 shàngqie with the meaning "but still...; for now".

Here are some more examples:

In example 7, the author used the verb 予以 yǔyǐ with the meaning "to expose (e.g., criticize); to give (e.g., praise)", which is used in book speech instead of the neutral-style verb 给以 gěiyǐ "to provide (something); to provide (something)".

Example 8 demonstrates an interesting combination of the keywords, only possible in book speech 以 yǐ "with the help of; by means of" + 使shǐ "to do so... so... so...". This combination gives the sentence more vivid stylistic colouring than the neutral preposition 为[了] wèi[le] "for".

Example 9 draws attention to the use of the construction 之所以 zhī suǒyǐ, characteristic of the classical written language, to change the actual division of the sentence, providing a more vivid accentuation of the reason.

These examples show that the authors of the articles not only do not seek to simplify their materials, but, on the contrary, adhere to high standards of book speech.

4) The presence of four syllables-chengyu (成 ch chéngyǔ).

Examples:

Here we will explain the meaning of the above phrases: in example 10, the expression "yáoyáo wúqī "was used to postpone indefinitely (term); in the distant future; until the carrot plot", in example 11, the author used the expression "to make a racket; to make noise; to loudly resent; hype" to illustrate the effect that the news produced. In examples 12-13, the authors resort to the idioms "there will never be peaceful days", "yuanyuanxiangbào "endlessly take revenge on each other; revenge begets revenge, and there will never be an end to it."

Thus, it can be stated that the publications of "Huanqiu shibao" actively use means of artistic expression, such as four-syllables-chengyu and other idiomatic expressions. Undoubtedly, this implies that the potential reader has a fairly high educational and cultural level.

II. 印度西西西日 ("Harian Indonesia", pall. "Indunisiya zhibao"), Indonesia; 南 ( ("Nanyang Siang Pau", "eNanyang", pall. "Nanyang shanbao"), Malaysia, Singapore; 菲律宾商报 ("Huilippin Siong Po", "Philippine Commercial News", pall. "Feiluibin shanbao"), Philippines.

A completely different picture is observed in the media publications of Indonesia and the Philippines on the same topic. They have the following features:

1) the vast majority of them are purely informational in nature;

2) they dryly report on the factual side of events without attempting to analyze, interpret or embed them in a broader political context;

3) even articles under the heading "editorial" (editorial, commentator's column), by definition implying the expression of an individual author's position, are mostly designed in an objectivist way and devoid of an evaluative component.

4) emotionally colored formulations are practically absent in the Indonesian Chinese-language media. It is interesting that even in a Muslim country like Indonesia, which is characterized by pronounced sympathy for the people of Palestine and a critical attitude towards Israeli policy, Chinese-language media cover the situation from a neutral position, limiting themselves to reprinting (in full or with abbreviations) official information materials.

5) The language of materials in the media of the Philippines and especially Indonesia is quite standard, simple, accessible to an audience with a basic level of Chinese language proficiency.

This situation can be explained at least in part by the specifics of the situation of the Chinese-language press in Indonesia. In October 1965, as a result of a coup blamed on the Communist Party of Indonesia, all Chinese-language newspapers were closed and banned. The only exception was the book we are considering, which was published not by the Chinese, but by the Indonesians ^{[22, p. 12]}. For a long time, the country has had strict restrictions on the use of the Chinese language, including in the field of education. As a result, this repressive policy should have resulted in a narrowing of the audience of publications, as well as a decrease in the number of ethnic Chinese journalists and a decrease in their professional level. It is obvious that by the time the bans were lifted, Chinese-language media in Indonesia simply did not have the personnel capable of preparing their own analytical materials.

Another significant factor determining the orientation and, as a result, the language of the discourse of the Chinese-speaking media of the Southeast Asian countries is the strengthening of the political and economic influence of the People's Republic of China, as well as Beijing's policy of increasing its "soft power" in recent years, including expanding its presence in the media space. Numerous agreements have been concluded between the Chinese media and local publications on the exchange of information content, publishers and journalists from Southeast Asian countries are regularly invited to the mainland to participate in conferences, seminars, trainings, etc. As a result, the local press began to lose its originality, becoming more and more "unified" with the mainland media in terms of the selection of materials and the language of publications. For example, in the Philippine media, only "Zhongguo Xinwenwang" is indicated as the source of information, and links to other publications are taken from there.

6) The publications of the Malaysian press stand somewhat apart. They trace the editorial policy, and sometimes the author's position.

Let's look at this in the following examples:

In example 14, the author of the article not only states the results of the first stage of hostilities, but focuses on the fact that they were painful for Israel. For this purpose, the chengyu 痛定思痛 tòngdìng sītòng is used "to reflect on your mistakes, to learn from what you have experienced", where the word "pain" is used twice.

In example 15, the attitude towards the Palestinians is expressed using the definition of "weak side" (弱势一方方òòshsh yīfāng), followed by chengyu 逞一时快快快 chěng yīshí zhī kuài "to receive momentary pleasure (without thinking about the consequences)."

The author's position can be seen in example 16, where it is noted that "the Arab countries will be difficult to give up the benefits of line for a peaceful settlement" (阿拉伯世界难以放弃和解潮带来的红利 Ālābó shìjiè nányǐ fàngqì héjiě cháo dài lái de hónglì).

7) The Chinese language used in the discourse of the Chinese-language media in Malaysia is grammatically and stylistically more complex.

Examples:

Examples 17-19 provide convincing evidence that the language of the Nanyang Shanbao materials is more complex than in Indonesian and Filipino publications. The texts contain many long, complex sentences, which in some cases have to be divided into parts in order to achieve the adequacy of the translation into Russian.

7) The texts of the Malaysian Nanyang Shanbao are replete with traditional Chinese idiomatic expressions.

In example 17, the idiom 多事之秋 duō shì zhī qiū is used with the meaning "troubled times, troubled times; a time of great change." If you translate it literally, you will get the expression "autumn with many events", which may remind the reader of the period of Spring and autumn in Zhou China, when the state turned out to be fragmented into a large number of large and small principalities, endlessly at war with each other.

In example 19, we are dealing with an omission-sehouyu (歇后语 xiēhòuyǔ), a type of Chinese phraseological units that represent a two–part saying - an allegory and its disclosure (explanation), with the second part usually omitted. The state of the Israeli army is characterized by the expression "a clay Bodhisattva fords a river, even his own body is difficult to keep intact," which means "he cannot help himself; helpless, powerless, defenseless." This idea is reinforced by another idiom 折戟沉沙 zhé jǐ chén shā "a broken halberd sank into the sands" – "to be defeated; failure".

Let's look at a few more examples:

The chengyu used in example 20 literally translates as "a thread of a web and hoofprints of a horse" in the sense of "a clue, a trace, a guiding thread, a clue", so the author of the article figuratively conveys the possibility of information leakage.

The expression " zhēndì" of the Buddhas. the highest truth, the true essence, the inner true meaning" from example 21 refers to the conceptual apparatus of Chinese Buddhism.

In example 22, we can find the idiom "canna flowers appear for a moment", which has the figurative meaning "to appear for a moment and disappear; short-term, transient, fleeting", which is used to describe the lightning nature of the attack by Palestinian militants on Israel.

Such a high level of discourse, grammatical and stylistic complexity, in our opinion, can be explained not only by the large number of ethnic Chinese living in Malaysia and Singapore (in the latter, Huayu Chinese is one of the official languages), but also by the long historical experience of Chinese-language media. The newspaper "Cha Shisu Meiyue Tongjichuan" (察世俗每月统纪传), founded in Malacca (Malaysia) in 1815, is recognized as the world's first foreign periodical in Chinese ^{[4, p. 46]}.

According to Chinese researchers, Singapore and Malaysia are the countries with the most developed Chinese media industry. According to the official document titled "The Blue Book of New Media: Report on the Development of New Media in China No. 10 (2019)", published in June 2019. The Institute of Journalism and Communication of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, together with the publishing house "Scientific Literature on Social Sciences", the top 20 most influential foreign Chinese-language media portals include three from Malaysia and two from Singapore. Online newspapers such as Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao Wang (联合早报, Lianhe Zaobao.com ), the Malaysian "China Press" (中,, Сһіпаргеѕѕ.сом.му ) and "Sin Chew Daily" (, sinchew.com.my ) are among the three leaders in their influence ^{[23, p. 106]}.

III. "Longyin Huxiao" (龍吟虎嘯), Hong Kong.

The discourse of the materials of this Hong Kong information resource is even more linguistically distinctive. Let's look at its features below.

1) Articles on Middle Eastern topics have a pronounced authorial character.

Examples:

From the above examples it is clear that the authors can show their attitude to the affected subject, their evaluation can be emotional, and sometimes even sharp (一面倒yīmiàndǎo unilateral, one-sided, biased; 殖民主义的丑恶行为zhímín zhǔyì de chǒu'è xíngwéi "colonialist essence of violent action).

2) Rich and diverse literary Chinese.

Complex grammatical constructions and idiomatic expressions are widely used in Hong Kong publications.

Examples:

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