| Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) aims to reveal the embedded ideologies by integrating the textual analysis with the wider socio-cultural context and further brings to light the relationship among language, power and ideologies. CDA exclusively focuses on public discourses due to that people accept public discourses in a passive way or public discourse exerts shaping effect upon the attitude and ideology in a society. Among them, news discourse is especially deserving of our attention. News agencies always boast of its objectivity and justness in their reports. This thesis applies Fairclough's three-dimensional model and Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar to conduct a critical discourse analysis of the news reports on Sino-Japan boat collision near the Diaoyu Islands. It aims to find out what kind of linguistic choices are strategically made on the part of discourse producer to reproduce and challenge already present ideologies and further reveals the power and ideologies embedded in the news discourse.On September 7th,2010, a Chinese fishing boat collided twice with Japanese patrol vessels near the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea. The Japanese coast guards intercepted the trawler and arrested 14 fishermen and the captain. As a result, Sino-Japan diplomatic relationship deteriorated dramatically. Chinese government expressed grave concern over the fishermen illegally detained by the Japanese. On Sept.13th, the 14 fishermen were released, but the captain was still detained by Japan for allegedly obstructing public duties. Eventually, the Chinese captain detained illegally for eighteen days was eventually released. The data under present study are the ten news reports selected respectively from China Daily and New York Times. The analysis is conducted at three levels:textual level, the levels of discourse practice and social practice. At textual level, the ideational differences between China Daily and New York Times are examined in terms of lexical classification and transitivity system. At discourse practice level, differences in discourse representation and news source are investigated. At social practice level, an explanation of these differences is provided by putting the news reports in the wider socio-cultural context and ultimately the embedded ideologies are brought to light.It is found that there exist dramatic differences in the choices of lexical items and process types between the two newspapers. As for lexical items, China Daily tends to put "us" in positive light by choosing those words carrying positive connotations. On the contrary, it invariably portrays "them " in negative light. The opposite is true of New York Times. It should be noted that New York Times does not exclusively create a favorable image of Japan. It despises Japanese Prime Minister and depicts him as "weak-kneed" In terms of the process types in the two newspapers, material process is dominantly used. This is primarily due to that material process can be better used to portray the process of the incident than others. In China Daily, "we" are always associated with positive verbs, while "they" with negative verbs. The second most frequently used process type is verbal process owing to that it can help China and U.S. to express their attitudes and opinions, it accounts for 35.7% and 27.2% respectively.As for discourse representation, indirect discourse is predominantly used by China Daily, with indirect discourse accounting for 71%. Direct discourse has a higher distribution in New York Times than that of China Daily. However, the total number of quotations employed by China Daily surpasses that of New York Times implying that the former is more objective in its reports. In terms of specific news source, it accounts for 62.2% and 52.2% respectively in the two newspapers. While unspecified news source takes up 37.8% and 47.8% in the two newspapers. All these differences demonstrate that the two newspapers, guided by their own attitudes and ideologies, present dramatically different reports on the same news event. New York Times representing the dominant ideologies of the U.S government basically holds a negative view towards China's rising and disseminates that China's rising poses a serious threat to world peace and regionally stability. And the boat collision offers them a good opportunity to tarnish China's image on the world stage and attempts to contain China's development by instigating its Asia ally, Japan.This analysis shows that news discourse could not possibly reproduce social reality in an absolute objective and impartial way. The choice of linguistic forms carries particular ideological orientations. Ideologies are reproduced and reconstructed in news discourse and ideologies exert constraining effect on the choices of potential linguistic forms and structures available to discourse producer. This thesis has both theoretical and practical significance. Theoretically, it validates that CDA is an effective tool in revealing the relationship between language and ideologies. It also proves that Fairclough's three-dimensional model can be applied in the study of news discourse. Practically, it draws people's attention to the ideologies embedded in news discourse and encourages them to improve their critical reading. |
PDF Full Text Request