A Critical Discourse Analysis Of New York Times' Reports On The March 14 Event In Tibet

Critical Discourse Analysis, which derived as a rather new branch from critical theories in the modern linguistic research, is also termed as Critical Linguistics. We apply critical discourse analysis mainly to unpack and analyze those ideologies hidden in the discourses which have been normally taken for granted; to improve readers' sensitivity to language by reevaluating ideological assumptions so that they could realize the subtle relationship between language and modern social life as well as between language application and unequal social relations; and to facilitate their critical reading.Conducting a critical discourse analysis of four news reports on the March 14 event in Tibet adopted from New York Times, this thesis intends to expose its backstage American government's opinions of the Dalai clique and Chinese government, as well as the power relations among the three sides. It also aims to give a representation of how discourse producers use language to propagate their ideologies, and how the national power utilizes language to help achieve its political purposes, thus to further explore the relationship between language, power and ideology.Within the framework of functional grammar, the author mainly applies Fairclough's three-dimensional model to do the analysis which includes three stages—description, interpretation and explanation. During the first stage, Halliday's systemic-functional grammar is chiefly used to describe the linguistic features of the collected news reports in terms of the three meta-functions: ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function. This stage is realized largely by quantization analysis of discourse. The second stage is to interpret how these discourses are produced on the ground of the relationship between linguistic features and social conventions. Last but not least, the author attempts to integrate the social context and social determinants of the discourse trying to explain the dialectical relationship between language and ideology. Three stages of analysis show that Tibetan minority is portrayed positively and "an independent Tibet" is supported by New York Times. This is opposite to a stereotypical ideology of "racial inferiority" in western media. On the contrary, an ideological intensity of "anti-Communism" is presented in the media discourse. The present thesis explains the ideological inclination of American media and government on the basis of social context and draws the figure of the triangular power relations among the Dalai clique, Chinese government and American government. It then further verifies that language not only reflects one's ideology, but also influences, reinforces or reshapes the ideology. Moreover, the author tries to provide readers with the perspective of critical analysis, hoping in some measure to help them come to realize the subtle relationship between language application and unequal social relations and not be misled by propaganda machines when exposed to western media.