Critical Discourse Analysis Of New York Times And China Daily On Sino-US Reports

As a theoretical framework for discourse analysis, critical linguistics was born in the late 1970s. It is based mainly on Halliday's systemic—functional grammar, therefore, it seeks to unveil the hidden ideologies, power relations and in particular the relationship between language and ideology. These ideologies hidden behind the language are usually accepted as common sense by people. Directly or indirectly, they can affect people's cognition. Therefore, they play a significant role in the construction of people's attitudes and ideologies. Right now it has become an important research subject of critical linguistics because the mass media discourse always appears with ideologies.This study is to demonstrate the value of critical linguistics in the analysis of mass media discourse; to investigate the hidden ideologies in mass media discourse and their influences on reader's cognition; and to evaluate Chinese and American media's efforts in influencing the international public opinions, and give some advice for China's international communication strategies.In order to achieve these goals, this thesis selects some news reports on Sino-US relationship from China Daily and New York Time as data, using the critical discourse analysis and Halliday's systemic-functional linguistics as the major theory. It conducts a comparative analysis to investigate the interaction between discourses and ideologies. The same news reports will also be analyzed under the guidance of Walter Lippmann's mass communication theory to study the acceptance and consumption of mass media discourses, and the consequent influences on the audience's attitudes.