A comparison between Chinese and American thought patterns from the perspective of commentaries on climate change issues in People’s Daily and the New York Times

ABSTRACT

This study attempted to analyse the differences between Chinese and American thought patterns by using quantitative methods based on the commentaries in the New York Times and People’s Daily for 9 months in 2010 considering climate change issues as samples; the thought patterns were based on six aspects: synthetic, analytical, imagery, logical, dialectical, and contradictory thinking. This study applied the t-test, chi-square test, and ANOVA to the coding analysis. It was observed that the thought patterns of synthetic and analytical thinking were similar, whereas the other four patterns had considerable differences. Moreover, the reliability of the coders was tested.

KEYWORDS:

• Thought pattern
• Chinese and American thought patterns
• climate change
• viewpoint commentary
• content analysis

Acknowledgement

The author gratefully express his thanks to Xin Na Zhao, Hui Wen Feng, Naren Chitty and Thaheer Hussain for their work and friendly cooperation during the stage of the production.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

YiHong Wang obtained her Ph.D. from Hamburg University, Germany, is Associate Professor and Executive Director of Center for the Research of the Intercultural Communication and Management, School of Journalism and Communication, Peking University. She has published more than 100 articles and papers in international journals and proceedings; one of her books on the Doxa of Intercultural Communication is a theoretical book about intercultural communication of a doxa model tested by a triangulation method. She has obtained three grants from Chinese National Social Sciences Funding and other grants from the Department of Culture in China, the Department of Communication in China etc. Her current research interests include theories, research methods and training of intercultural communication.

XiaoChuan Jian obtained his Master’s degree from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and is an editor in Tencent Co., which is the biggest social media in China.

Ke Li obtained his Master’s degree from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and is an editor in GuangMing Daily, one of the most famous newspapers in China.

XinWei Long obtained his Master’s degree from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and is an editor in CCTV.

XiaoWei Zhang obtained his Master’s degree from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and is a journalist and an editor in Linkhome Co., which is one of the biggest real estate companies in China.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Chinese National Social Sciences Funding (11BXW024, 15AH1006).