| Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is an interdisciplinary discipline based on such subjects as linguistics, sociology and mass media and so forth. It mainly shows great concern for the study of social public discourses. Through analyzing the linguistic forms of discourses, CDA aims to uncover the ideology hidden in discourses and examine the constructive effect of discourses on the forming of social ideology and belief systems.News discourse as a kind of non-literary public discourse attracts attention from many critical discourse analysts. The dialectical relation between discourse and ideology has always been a hot issue for critical news discourse study. Critical linguists make critical analysis on the structure of news discourse and expose some political or ideological features embedded so as to reveal that news discourses are by no means objective and unbiased. News reporters decide what to be reported and how to report according to their ideologies and the positions of the news agencies they represent.Based on Fairclough's three-dimensional model and Halliday's systemic-functional grammar, the present thesis conducts a comparative critical analysis of news reports from different sources on the same event with the purpose of identifying diverse ideologies hidden in the news discourses. The news samples for analysis are ten English news reports concerning China's economical investment in Africa which are extracted from Chinese media (Beijing Review; China Daily) and American media (Time; Walstreet Journal). The present comparative analysis is carried out at three levels (the textual level; the discursive level; the social practice level). At the textual level, such linguistic features as classification and transitivity are explored. At the discursive level, reporting modes and news sources are examined. Finally, at the level of social practice, the analysis focuses on investigating the textual choices within a wider socialcultural context in which the discourse are produced.From the comparative analysis of the sample news, conclusions are drawn as follow: (1) At the textual and discursive levels, there exist striking differences in linguistic features like classification, transitivity, modality and intertextuality in Chinese and American news reports on China's economical investment in Africa. By analyzing the different linguistic features in a wider socialcultrural context, it is found that these linguistic choices are not randomly made by the reporters but are deliberately orchestrated under the influence of the reporters or the stances of the news agencies they stand for. (2) Chinese and American newspapers respectively represent their governments and social mainstream ideologies. So they hold different grounds. The choices of linguistic forms in news discourses are products of certain ideology and social structure. Although newspapers try to be objective and impartial, the seemingly neutral representations unavoidably conceal the naturalized ideology. Therefore, the objectivity of news reports is a relative concept.Besides, the thesis has theoretical and practical significances. Theoretically, the findings well prove that the combination of Fairclough's three dimensional model and Halliday's systemic-functional grammar is very effective and applicable way to conduct a comparative analysis of different news reports on the same issue. The findings also have implication for the language teaching at home. They suggest that English reading teaching should be targeted towards promoting language learners critical reading ability so as to free themselves from unjust ideological control.
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