| Despite the success of female athletes in a wide variety of sports, women are treated differently than men in the sports media. Content analyses consistently find differences in the language used and amount of coverage for male and female athletes in English sports newspaper, but little research has examined the effects of those differences from the Critical Discourse Analysis perspective. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), as a new branch in linguistic analysis, combines the achievements of scientific research in the field of linguistics, psychology, sociology, the mass media etc. in the study of language use. Aiming at exploring the ideology in language in the service of power, CDA approach can serve as an effective tool for revealing gender stereotypes---a kind of sexist ideology---projected in sports news reports. Therefore, this thesis is designed to explore gender stereotypes embodied in NBA and WNBA reports with CDA approach, in the hope of helping the readers be aware of the gender ideology hidden in sports news.Under the framework of Fairclough s three-dimensional model, this thesis makes a contrastive analysis on 28 NBA and WNBA news texts from 2007 to 2010. Corresponding to the three-dimensional model of CDA, the sampled news reports are analyzed at three different stages: the description stage, the interpretation stage and the explanation stage. Through the specific analytical tools such as lexical classification, transitivity, modality and intertextuality, the thesis attempts to identify and decode the gender ideologies embedded in the sports news reports.Following a close comparative analysis of the sampled news reports, the thesis reaches the conclusion that sports news discourse is not neutral, transparent or objective all the time. It is determined by the underlying ideologies and social contexts, and in turn contributes to the shaping and reproduction of ideologies. The research also proves that Fairclough s three-dimensional model is applicable in the comparative study of news reports from different sources and the framework of CDA is a powerful instrument to uncover the relationship between language and ideology. Most of the previous CDA researches mainly concentrate on gender issues in literary works; little attention has been paid to public media discourse. Therefore, by employing CDA method, this thesis tries to probe gender ideology from a new perspective---the sports news coverage. Hopefully it aims to arouse people s awareness of gender issues and being conductive to the further study of gender issues in public discourse. |
PDF Full Text Request