Abstract：This is a corpus-driven study in comparing the language use of website texts of Chinese and European higher educational institutions. To enhance the appeal of outward-oriented text is the primary goal of the language strategy employed in composing websites in both Chinese and European universities. Based on the data obtained from the corpus of outward-oriented text, this paper investigates the language strategies in terms of interactiveness, outwardness and multimediality between internet-based texts of Chinese and European universities. Drawing up the quantitative date from the corpus specially compiled, the overall appeals of the website texts are compared. The findings show that, in terms of three criteria of interactiveness, multimedialty and outwardness, as far as the former two criteria are concerned, European universities are significantly higher than their Chinese counterparts, and the latter criterion also slightly over performs Chinese universities. Overall, the appeal of the European universities is higher, with the exception of some universities of foreign studies in China, which perform slightly better than a few Europeans universities. Based on the findings, we suggest that internet-based outward-oriented texts of Chinese universities shall improve interactiveness and multimodality strategies. In other words, to enhance their attractiveness for overseas audiences thus to boost the development of China’s higher education in global market, it is necessary to embark upon a reform program to improve the language strategy in narration mode, information type and information structure.
郑剑委. 中外高校外宣文本语言策略对比研究[J]. 语言战略研究, 2019, 4(2): 66-73.
Zheng Jianwei. A Comparative Analysis of the Language Strategy of Outward-oriented Website Texts Between Chinese and European Universities. , 2019, 4(2): 66-73.
