Linguistic Representation of China in American Media

Nowadays, the prestige of country plays a vital role in its development. Therefore, national leaders have been using the aspect of the international reputation in the global political competition. Thus, the relationship between the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China has been influenced by propaganda. The analysed in this paper American media have mostly been aligning with the official policy of the US, promoting biased opinions. The COVID-19 pandemic has become a prosperous field for shaping the negative image of China. The present study aims at analysing the lexical units employed by the prominent American news media companies to describe China in the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, the COVID-19 outbreak has incited intolerance for China and the Chinese in the United States of America. The way Americans perceive China has been shaped by biased opinions, indoctrination, accusations which have been conveyed by means of evaluative language. Hence, there has been an upward tendency in the negative attitudes towards China among the ordinary Americans. Furthermore, a number of the government officials have been accused of making politically incorrect statements encouraging Sinophobia. Although limited in scope, the study may contribute to the fields of linguistic research and media studies. Keywords: national image, China, American media, COVID-19, lexical units, evaluative language, bias