A Comparative Study Of Critical Discourse Analysis Of The News Reports On World Climate Change Conference In China Daily And The New York Times

The authoritative news media are the main information sources for the majority ofpeople. Meanwhile, news discourse from them becomes a key tool for the social interestand political right groups to influence and control people’s ideology and stance. Theglobal climate change issue has come under the spotlight. The representative media’snews reports on climate talks can well present their stance and image on this issue. Thispaper intends to dig out the ideology that is embodied in the news texts and the guidingmotivation that drives China Daily and The New York Times to choose different reportingfocus and reporting strategies. By applying Halliday’s Systematic Function of Language(SFL) and Appraisal Theory, this paper attempts to answer these questions:a. What kinds of language strategies are used by the two countries’ media to reportclimate change?b. What kinds of ideology are hidden behind the news reports of China and America on climate change?c. Are there any divergences behind consensus? If “yes’, what are they?This paper makes a comparative analysis of the news reports from China Daily andThe New York Times, which are the representative news media of China and USA, onclimate negotiation processes. On the one hand, they both are written in English, whichmake it easier for comparison. On the other hand, China Daily and The New York Times,both are one of the most authorities and influential news media of China and Americanrespectively. They set out the important information of each government’s politics,economy, and society culture and so on”. After building the corpus one and two, thispaper comes to use the Corpora AntConc and WordSmith Tools13.0as assistant tools tocheck out the data and analyzes the relevant outcomes. By comparing the news reportsfrom the two media on ideational, interpersonal and textual aspects, the paper finds thatthey have some common points and divergences. It concludes that two media both usedifferent language strategies and textual arrangement to build their national images,especially ecological images, during the climate talks. At the same time, the differentideologies are laden in the news reports’ stance and perspective toward the climate issue.The implicit and explicit division of “us” and “them” and shifting the responsibility at theclimate conferences are dominated by the struggle of various interests. What’s more, thetwo media would capture the spotlight news from different perspectives.News reports are meaning and interest packed texts, critical study is of greatnecessity and significance. The critical and comparative analysis may help the readers tobuild a critical reading and thinking mind. Thus, they can have a better understanding ofthe news texts—ideology and stance packed information.