| Nowadays, we live in a time boomed with dialogue. Dialogue is becoming the way that people communicate not only with other people, but also with all kinds of media that they are exposed to. News reportage is such a case in point. Bakhtin deems that language lives only in the dialogic interaction of those who make use of it. Dialogic interaction is indeed the authentic sphere where language lives. Bakhtin's dialogic theory, in a sense, provides us with an interface to analyze news reportage from the critical point of view.The news story is controlled by its hidden ideology. It is not a neutral vehicle, nor is news production a neutral process. Since a reporter's prime concern is truth, freedom of expression, as far as the report is concerned, should be limited to conveying facts, statistics and actually what had happened, from this vantage, the news reportage is supposed to have one voice—the facts. However, it is not the case at all. Although certain liberties are acceptable, mainly for polishing the language or to provide lively reading, distortions, garbled versions and half-truths must be rejected. But different institutions have different stances, and in turn, the media becomes the vehicles for them to trumpet their own opinions. No wonder vari-voices could be heard in news reportage, therefore achievement of perfect objectivity is next to impossible.To take the press as an example: though a newspaper is not expected to take sides, the language used in news reportage depends upon the purpose and the policy of a particular paper on different subjects like politics, trade and economics. At the same time, the editors also are in a dilemma that if they want their news reportage attracting, they must employ affectively potent language, which certainly will embody biases; on the other hand, if they want their news reportage to be believed, they should avoid such language.This present study is to reveal the bi-directional relationship between news language and ideology through the analysis of reporting verbs, reporting modes together with news content in political news discourses, trying to find out the "vari-voices" behind the media, aiming to enhance the newspaper consumers together with the second language learners' awareness against the infiltration of western ideologies when they are exposed to these information. |
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