A Comparative Analysis Of Reporting Modes Between Chinese Newspapers And English Newspapers

In modern society, news reporting has long been playing a crucial role in public communication. That is why the study of news has been placed in top priority in the field of discourse analysis, especially critical discourse analysis (CDA). CDA emerged as a method of discourse analysis at the end of the1970s and it aims at disclosing the relationship between language, power and ideology. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the mode of speech reporting in news texts from a CDA perspective.Traditionally, studies on speech reporting have been overwhelmingly confined to pure transformation between direct speech and indirect speech, which is a static and mechanical research method. According to Baynham, the traditional approach sees speech reporting only in syntactic terms. However, it is parochial. Contemporary studies of speech reporting are focusing their attention on discourse context and social background, which provides us a fuller and more comprehensive perspective of news discourse.Drawing on the insights of Critical Discourse Analysis, this thesis makes a comparative analysis between China Youth Daily and the Washington Post on the reportage of London riots. The results of the comparison discloses that China Youth Daily is more inclined to lay stress on the reporting of the event itself whereas the Washington Post is more interested in an in-depth analysis of the cause of the riot. The conclusion is that China Youth Daily is objective while the Washington Post is a little bit biased.The whole thesis includes six Chapters. Chapter One is introduction. Chapter Two is literature review. Chapter Three is the methodology and data. Chapter Four is the presentation of modes of speech reporting combined with specific examples from the sample news. Chapter Five tends to analyze the result of Chapter Four from a societal-pragmatic perspective, trying to explain in cultural tradition and social institution. The conclusion part provides the main points again. Readers can draw enlightenment from the thesis that while reading political news, we should spot ideology behind words and do not mislead by the reporter’s political stances. Some limitations and further studies about speech reporting are also pointed out.