A Critical Discourse Analysis Of News Report On Immigration During Immigration Reform In USA

This study is a critical analysis of the news discourse in media on America immigration reform.12 news reports from 10 media institutions are selected and examined by taking critical discourse analysis method.Critical discourse analysis(CDA) was also called critical linguistics(CL) which was proposed by Fowler in Language and Control in 1979.The subject of CL is discourse analysis. there are two ways of discourse analysis:one is non-critical discourse analysis,which focus on the linguistic feature of the text such as cohesion and coherence,turn-taking,etc.the other is critical discourse analysis in which the analysis focus both the linguistic features of the text and the ideology behind the discourse.The theoretical basis of CDA is Halliday's systemic-functional linguistics(SFL).The purpose of CDA is to provide accounts of the production,internal structure and overall organization of texts.Critical discourse analysis has made the study of language into an inter-disciplinary tool and can be used with various backgrounds,including the critical study of media texts. Therefore,this thesis is a case study from CDA perspective.The research tool employed in this thesis is Norman Fairclough's three-dimensional model of discourse.The reason for such choice is that it allows focusing more on the production process of discourse in the discursive context rather than just examining the discursive text.The linguistic theory that CDA has traditionally drawn upon is Halliday's Systemic-Functional Grammar,which is largely concerned with the function of language in the social structure(Fowler,1991).Starting from Fairclough's analytical framework,this thesis aims to show how news discourse in media is shaped by relation of power and ideology and how the newsmakers present their perception of 'reality' ideologically,and therefore linguistically.Through the discussion of the research findings,the thesis concludes that the ideology of news maker may be embedded in the discourses of reports.The similarities or differences in ideology may be revealed by connecting linguistic features with social-cultural context.As an immigrant country in history,the attitudes of the media in the United States are complicated:on the one hand,the existing immigration policy should be reformed is the common sense among American media,but the focus of reports is on the identity of "illegal immigrants" instead of the problem of immigration;on the other hand,there exist great demand for foreign immigrants in job markets but there is no mention of the contribution of illegal or legal immigrants to American economy in news reports.The research findings in the thesis indicate that the historical/social background and economic interest is responsible for the mixed attitudes shown in immigration reform news report.