CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
In this section, a general description about the research topic, background infor mation, rationale, research questions, the general or ganization and possible limitations will be presented, serving as guidance to this study. The author in this research, will an alyze Chinese and English Football Commercial Transfer News Discourses (FCTND) (For the r ecord, football refers in particular to soccer hereinafter) mainly from the perspectives of cognition and stance, grounded upon the studies of image schema and linguistic resources such as stance markers, by applying image schema theory which is an im portant concept in Lakof f and Johnson’s (1987) cognitive metaphor theory, and discourse stance theory which comprises Biber, Johanson, Leech, Conrad and Finegan’ s (1999) three kinds of stance, Hunston and Thom pson’s (2000) four parameters of stance markers a nd Hyland’s (2005) four elem ents of stance markers. Generally speaking, this research falls into the domain of cross-cultural discourse analysis, presenting a contrastive study between Chinese and English sports transfer news discourses. To be m ore specific, the focu ses of this research concerning Football Commercial Transfer News Discourses (FCTND) are various underlying image schemata unconsciously employed to construct com plicated information, and to communicate football transfer news writers’ ideas and individual perspect ives in re lation to specif ic events to the public institutions and discourse consumers, as well as the application of linguistic resources such as stance m arkers to demonstrate the stance of di fferent parties or stakeholders, and how all these linguistic devices are com bined to influence the perception and cognition of discourse readers and realize their communicative purposes.
1.1 Research Background
On the political front, with President Xi Jinping who is profoundly obsessed with football assuming the reins of governm ent, the central government and supreme leadership have passed through relevant program s of football reform, which is absolutely epoch-m aking and has becom e a m ilestone in the cour se of foot ball development, granting unprecedented opportunities for the development of this universally influential sport. The revitalization of football is a significant part of the long-cherished dream of the Chinese people, building our nation as a worldwide sports power. With the rapid developm ent of modern economy, the enormous potential economic value underlying the surface of sport indus try has gained substantial recognition across China. Along with the general im provement in the living standards of the broad masses, residents are in increasing possession of disposable personal incom es, which has contributed to the flourishing of sport industry on our terr itory over the past decade, and sport industry is widely considered as a s unrise industry in our c ountry. The remarkable economic growth triggered by the developm ent of the sport industry , has occupied a progressively larger proportion in gross na tional product (GNP) and has attracted m ore and more attention from the masses.
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1.2 Rationale
Discourse analysis is a perspective with r egard to soc ial life which contains not only methodological but also conceptual elem ents. Discourse analysis includes ways of thinking about discourse and ways of treating discourse as data. According to Potter and Wetherell (1987:146), “Discourse analysis ha s an analytic comm itment to studying discourse
