A Critical Discourse Analysis Of News Reports On American Presidents' Meeting With Dalai Lama In China Daily And New York Times

In the past few years, the bilateral relations between China and America are the focuses of international community, and the issue of American presidents'meeting with Dalai Lama attracts many people's attention. Despite the Chinese government's strong opposition, the American presidents met Dalai Lama and attacked China's human rights by virtue of Dalai Lama issue. As to this event, news institutions of the two countries report it. From the perspective of critical discourse analysis, the hidden ideologies behind linguistic features of news reports deserve our attention. The present study adopts Fairclough's three-dimensional framework to analyze twenty five news reports on American presidents'meeting with Dalai Lama in China Daily and New York Times.Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is also known as critical linguistics. As a branch of linguistics, CDA emphasizes the critical analysis of discourse, especially of public discourse. It concerns the relations between language, power and ideology. As a useful approach of discourse analysis, the study areas of CDA cover politics, economy, religion, natural disasters etc. Based on Fairclough's three-dimensional framework, the present study carries out from three dimensions by integrating the three metafunctions in Halliday's systemic functional grammar and using the qualitative and quantitative methods. The study analyzes news reports from lexical choice, modality, news sources, modes of speech reporting and reporting verbs to explore the hidden ideologies behind linguistic features.By analyzing linguistic features, it was found that the two newspapers share something in common. However, the differences are more evident. With regard to lexical choice of words referring to Dalai Lama and modality, China Daily stresses the political nature of Dalai Lama and describes him as a separatist; New York Times emphasizes Dalai Lama's religious nature and regards him as a spiritual leader. The use of modal auxiliary verbs in China Daily conveys China's moderate attitude, but high value modal verbs in New York Times convey its commanding tone. With regard to speech reporting, it was found that China Daily quotes more national authorities'words and presents them by direct speech. The using of direct speech enhances the objectivity and conveys that the Chinese opinion is unshakable. New York Times quotes various news sources including American authorities'words and Dalai Lama's words which are mostly quoted by direct speech. However, New York Times adopts indirect speech and preset direct discourse to report the Chinese side's outrage. When it comes to the content of quotations, we find that China Daily tends to report the negative effect of the meeting and New York Times describes the Chinese sides'strong outrage of the meeting. As to reporting verbs, China Daily uses more neutral and positive reporting verbs to report and builds a responsible Chinese image. However, New York Times adopts many negative reporting verbs to present the unpeaceful and irresponsible Chinese image. Therefore, linguistic features of news reports are not absolutely objective; they are determined by the reporter's ideology.The present study explores the relationship between language and ideology by analyzing linguistic features. It helps us understand different ideologies implied in news reports and cultivate our critical language awareness.