CDA Approach To The Representation Of 2008 Beijing Olympic Games Bid In Chinese And American Newspapers

Critical discourse analysis (henceforth CDA) is a contemporary approach to the study of language and discourse in social institutions, which draws heavily on the notions and methods associated with systemic-functional grammar (henceforth SFG) developed by Halliday. It seeks to reveal the underlying ideologies and power relation hidden in discourse and examine the constructive effect of discourse upon social status, social relations and systems of beliefs and values. CDA practitioners show deep interest in and contribute much to exploring ideology embedded in news discourse which affects and controls people's cognition directly or indirectly and plays a significant role in forming people's perception and attitudes. From the perspective of CDA, the present thesis intends to make a detailed analysis of the representation in news discourse to demonstrate the inseparable relationship between language use and ideology in certain situational and social context.Based on Fairclough's three-dimensional model and Halliday's systemic-functional grammar, the present thesis carries out a comparative critical analysis of news reports from different sources on the same event with a view to identify diverse ideologies hidden in news discourse. Samples for analysis are ten English news reports concerning the successful bid of Beijing for 2008 Olympic Games extracted from People's Daily and New York Times respectively. The present analysis is carried out at three levels. At the textual level, aspects of lexical classification and transitivity are explored. Modes of discourse representation and news sources are examined at the discursive level. Analysis at the third level focuses on investigating the textual choices in the light of social and cultural context in which texts are produced.Through the comparative analysis, it is found that news discourse is never neutral, transparent and objective, but ideology-loaded and affected by social and cultural structures. There exist striking differences between the representations of Beijing 2008 Olympic Games bid in these two newspapers. Those discrepancies, embedded in various textual strategies and discursive practices, illustrate that news discourse is determined by the underlying ideologies and socio-cultural contexts, and in turn it contributes to the maintenance and reproduction of ideological assumptions.Findings of the present study reveal that the framework of CDA is a powerful instrument to uncover the relationship between language and ideology and Fairclough's three-dimensional model is applicable in a comparative study of news reports from different sources. The findings also point out the need to raise critical language awareness in language learning in general and news reading in particular, so that individuals will be able to read critically and set free from unjustified ideological manipulation. It is suggested that language teaching should be targeted at promoting critical reading skills to make sure that students are familiar with some naturalized linguistic strategies which are applied in news reports reflecting the underlying ideologies.It is hoped that this study will contribute to a better understanding of critical analysis of news discourse, give some inspiration to foreign language teaching and foster more interest in media studies.