A Corpus-based Comparison of Lexical Features in English News: China Daily and CNNs Reports about Russia-Ukraine Conflict as Examples

Abstract

The news plays a crucial role in disseminating information to the public. The use and preferences of vocabulary in news articles reflect the language proficiency, attitudes, and positions of news writers. Therefore, this study examines the differences in vocabulary characteristics between China Daily, a Chinese news organization, and CNN, a US news organization, in their news writing on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Through corpus-based research methods, the study aims to explore the differences in lexical features and provide insights for journalists and English writing learners in terms of vocabulary selection and comprehension when writing and reading English news about the Russia-Ukraine conflict and related war and conflict events.