The Construction of Harbin’s Image in Chinese and Western Media: A Corpus-Based Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

With the development of the ice and snow economy, Harbin has received great attention in domestic and international economic cooperation and cultural exchange. This paper conducts a corpus-based critical discourse analysis over the characteristics of Chinese and Western English media reports on Harbin, aiming to quantitatively and qualitatively study the discourse construction of Harbin’s city image. The results show that firstly, Harbin is mainly presented as “the city of ice and snow” in both media. Secondly, while domestic media focus more on shaping Harbin’s city image around tourism with the purpose of driving economic development, the focus of foreign media is more diverse and comprehensive. Thirdly, limitations exist in both media and need to be reduced.