A Proximization Study of Critical Discourse Analysis---Taking the Documentary Itaewon Crush as an Example

Abstract

Based on the documentary Itaewon Crush, guided by proximization theory, this paper makes a comparative study of the discourse strategies of the documentary on the theme of sudden catastrophic events from two aspects: negative proximization and positive proximization. It is found that the entities recognized to be ODCs and IDCs, the use of lexical items, and the communication effects achieved are different in negative proximization and positive proximization. The former takes government and disaster as the external threat to the deictic center, emphasizing the serious consequences of disasters and government actions to realize the documentary’s warning effect. The latter establishes a positive influence between the external entities and the deictic center to achieve the documentary’s humanistic value.