| Critical discourse analysis is a new branch in linguistic analvsis. It combines the achievements of scientific researches in the field of linguistics, sociology, psychology. and mass media. It aims to disclose the ideology, inequality and power relations behind language. Critical discourse analysis incorporates social-theoretical and social-political insights into discourse analysis and advocates social commitment in research. As a new research domain, critical discourse analysis receives more and more attention by scholars of different disciplines. Critical discourse analysis is based on Halliday’s Systemic-Functional Grammar. News text is a popular research field in critical discourse analysis. News is generally believed to be objective. Nevertheless. in recent years, this viewpoint has been challenged by critical linguists.This thesis makes a contrastive analysis of several news reports selected from The New York Times and China Daily. It aims to disclose the ideology hidden behind language by analyzing their differences in terms of lexical classification, transitivity, modality, intertextuality and so on. The first chapter presents the overview as well as the research questions, the significance and purpose of the research, and then it makes an explanation of the whole structure of the thesis. The second chapter first introduces the development of CDA. It presents a literature review of CDA, such as the definition of CDA and the concerning key concepts. Then it makes a summary of the related studies of news media at home and abroad. The third chapter mainly introduces the analytical tool and theoretical framework of this thesis. It introduces Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework and Halliday’s Systemic-Functional Grammar. The fourth chapter focuses on the cntical discourse analysis of the news reports selected from The New York Times and China Daily referring to the reports of Iran’s nuclear issues. It aims to prove that language in news discourse has the function of dominance of ideology and power. The last chapter makes a conclusion of the thesis by putting forward limitations of the research and suggestions for further study. Through the analysis, it was found that different culture and social groups use language from their own angles to describe the same event. Meanwhile, the findings can also prove the applicablity of the presented research framework to the constrative analysis of news texts.This thesis analysis makes a critical discourse analysis of the news text and reveals the ideology hidden behind language. The practical significance of this study is that it tries to provide readers with a different perspective of analyzing language so as to improve their critical language awareness and help them improve their English reading ability. |
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