| News discourse is one important kind of media, through which people get instantmessages and latest information to keep up with the world. When making news, reportersusually resort to a larger number of quotations to stress the objectiveness and fairness soas to cover up their positions in news coverage. In recent years, the development ofcritical linguistics and growing-up of critical discourse analysis have provided peoplewith an effective tool to reveal the disguise of that seemingly objective news discourse.With quotation in disaster news reports as its analytical subject, this paper centers onone major issue: the objectiveness of quotation in disaster news discourse. A nullhypothesis---disaster news discourse is value-free and impartial, irrelevant to quotationexpressions in it; different quotation expressions are merely an embodiment of linguisticdiversity, having nothing to do with tendency---is first put forward; after that is a pilotstudy on the basis of one news report sample on2011Japan’s earthquake and tsunamidisaster. A tentative analysis of quotation finds that the proposed null hypothesis isunacceptable, thus some alternative hypotheses are put forward. Then with59differentnews reports on the same disaster selected from The New York Times as its data, a furtherresearch is carried out from a critical perspective by adopting both the quantitative andqualitative approaches with the aid of SPSS.The research views news discourse as an end-product of social communication.With critical discourse analysis as its theoretical basis and Levinson’s neo-Griceanpragmatic principle as its theoretical framework, and standing in a double position of bothnews reporters and readers, two participants in the communication, it reconstructs ananalytical framework for quotation and puts forwards a three-procedure critical analysisof quotation, that is, the production, consumption and after-sale processes. On one hand,it examines from the aspects of quotation mode, source and signal how reporters havecertain ideologies conveyed through various kinds of quotation expressions; on the otherhand, from the aspect of markedness of quotation expressions, it makes an analysis ofhow readers understand and interpret the reported news events. The research finds thatdue to such various social factors as the media, the reporter, the audience and the activityitself, the seemingly neutral and objective quotation in disaster news discourse actuallyconceals certain hidden ideology, serving to certain power; thus, it can be seen that newsdiscourse is not merely an information provider but more a messenger of ideology. Theresearch verifies that language is none a neutral and transparent medium, but a means of ideology communication, a kind of social practice which also participates in the socialconstruction while reflecting the society. Meanwhile, it also aims to reveal the dialecticalrelationship between language and ideology in-depth, trying to arouse readers’ criticallanguage awareness and strengthening their critical reading ability so as to see throughthe language to perceive the essence and have an appropriate and a reasonableunderstanding of the reality. |
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