A CDA Perspective On Personal Reference In News Reports On Nuclear Arms Dispute

To Fairclough and other critically minded discourse analysts, discourse not only is a product or reflection of social processes, but also contributes to the production of these processes. Discourse both shapes and is shaped by society. Ideology plays a very significant role in sustaining and reinforcing social structures and relations in modern society. As a pre-eminent manifestation of this socially constitutive ideology, language becomes the primary instrument through which ideology is transmitted, enacted and reproduced. Therefore, by analyzing the linguistic structures in the light of their international and wider social contexts, we can unlock the ideologies and recover the social meanings expressed in discourse. News is determined by values, and the kind of language in which that news is told reflects and expresses those values.This thesis studies the personal reference used in the news reports on Iran's nuclear weapon issue from the perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), so as to find out the inherent connections between news language and ideology.The language used in the news reports not only stands for a certain type of ideology but also bases itself on that ideology. Many English news reports appear impartial, but actually they are expressed with some hidden ideologies, exerting an implicit influence on readers. When we readers have no problem in understanding the vocabulary and grammar in the English news reports, we should try to interpret the texts from ideological perspectives on the basis of the propositional meanings in them.The thesis gives a comprehensive review of studies on the personal reference carried out by former researchers. In the review we discuss the personal reference in Systemic Functional Grammar, definition and classification of personal reference, personal reference studies in different discourse genres, and different approaches to studying personal reference. We find little is done in the news reports on Iran's nuclear weapon issue and little is done from the perspective of CDA. Because the news reports on nuclear arms dispute is an important form of news media, and the grammar used is influenced by a certain ideology of a group, there is a need to study the personal reference in this kind of news reports. By unveiling the hidden ideological power and control in the news reports and studying the function of the news reports in this kind of power and control, we can unveil the deception embodied in power discourse to the public and help the public to improve their sensitivity towards the news reports and foster their critical interpretation of discourse. So in this thesis, we will analyze the personal reference used in the news reports on Iran's nuclear weapon issue from the perspective of CDA.The thesis adopts Rees' distancing strategy of personal reference on the basis of Halliday and Hasan's personal reference system. As to analysis procedure, the author follows Fairclough's three-dimensional model of discourse analysis. The data used in this thesis is selected from a famous American online newspaper: The New York Times—the direct speeches from the Iran side and the U.S.A side in English news reports on Iran's nuclear weapon issue, with 31 pieces of news altogether. The data analysis includes linguistic description of the language text, followed by interpretation of the relationship between the discursive processes and the text, and explanation of the relationship between the discursive processes and the social processes.What follows data analysis is the discussion of personal reference in order to reveal the relationship between ideology and the choices of personal reference under social contexts. Basing on the proposed theoretical framework, the author first sorts out the direct speeches from the news already collected, which were mainly given by the persons from two political sides: the United States and Iran, and records the use of each personal reference item in accordance with Halliday and Hasan's personal reference system. Then the author states the meaning of each personal reference item and the personal distance they each refer to. Finally, based on the nuclear program background, the analysis is made to find out the hidden ideology each personal reference has.The last part is the conclusion of the major findings from the analysis in this thesis. With the choices of the personal reference items, we can see U.S.A. was trying all what they could to form an ally on Iran's nuclear weapon issue in order to realize their ambition for hegemony. The thesis unveils U.S.A.'s hidden ideology of hegemony. The use of personal reference items by Iran officials shows that Iran administration insisted on Iran's innocence in the nuclear weapon issue and the government tried to unite Iran people and other power groups with justice to defend Iran as much as possible.