| Since the Second World War, the diplomatic relationship between China and Japan has been unstable and is always a sensitive topic. Although the two countries have been working on normalizing the diplomatic relationship, there are still some factors that can lead to unstable situation between the two countries. And words and speeches that are not consistent with historical facts always exist.In September2012, Japan’s nationalization of the Dioayu islands, which are an integral part of the Chinese territory, aroused a new round of tension and confrontation between the two countries. Chinese government showed its firm stance and the Japanese government also expressed their attitudes towards the disputes. The United States, as a critical power in planting the seeds of the disputes, also showed their stand on and understanding of the Diaoyu islands disputes between China and Japan. At the same time, news media all around the world have showed great and continuous concerns for the event and have reported the event with different viewpoints. Therefore, it is of great importance to understand the implied meanings of various news reports. Linguistic tools may serve to analyze various news reports from a new perspective. And this study aims to analyze the Diaoyu islands disputes from the perspective of critical discourse analysis, using data collected from The Washington Post and China Daily.Critical discourse analysis, as a branch of linguistics, emphasizes the critical analysis of discourses, especially of a public discourses. It mainly concerns with the relation between language, power and ideology. Specifically, it seeks to unveil the hidden ideologies, power relations in news discourses, especially the relationship between language and ideology. With Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework and Halliday’s systemic functional grammar, this study aims to reveal the invested ideologies in news reports through analyzing the linguistic features. Text, discursive practice and social practice are three levels at which the analysis is conducted. At the level of text, analysis is carried out from the aspects of transitivity, modality and lexical classification to study the linguistic features of news reports. At the level of discursive practice, the analysis focuses on news sources and modes of speech reporting in intertextuality study. At the level of social practice, the larger context of discourse analysis, including institutional, situational and social and cultural contexts of news discourses are dealt with. More importantly, the study concentrates on how ideologies are embedded in the three levels.Through detailed analysis, it has been found that The Washington Post and China Daily share similarities in the linguistic devices used to report and to embed ideologies. However, they are greatly different in the ideas expressed on the Diaoyu islands disputes. Readers are unconsciously influenced by these hidden ideologies. Neither of the two newspapers can be absolutely objective and value-free, because they are to serve the purposes of their governments. Moreover, the social and cultural factors play an indispensable role in forming their differences. The study provides suggestions for news readers, who are supposed to raise their critical language awareness to evaluate various news reports. At the same time, news reporters of China are expected to realize their role and responsibilities in presenting an objective image of China and let the world capture the real image of China.In addition, in this age of information explosion, intercultural communication has become a trend. For colleague teachers and students, interpreting news reports from a CDA perspective will promote the foreign language teaching and learning. |
PDF Full Text Request