A Study Of Media Reports Concerning Political Events From The Perspective Of Critical Discourse Analysis

Language is not only a means of communication, but also a reflection of the social ideology. The public media opinion permeated every aspect of social life, with a strong influence on people’s daily lives. News, as a special type of language use, plays an important role in the mass media to spread information and influence the public. However, we found that except for the practical and realistic report of the event itself, the objectivity and impartiality of the news are influenced by many other factors. The news reports convey a variety of information as well as reflect the views and attitudes of the reporter, the social background and the system of social value, etc. Especially for political news, it often reflects the political affiliation and the value orientation of the country, all of which are the reflection of ideology in news discourse.Critical discourse analysis is a common method for the study of news reports. Critical Discourse Analysis focuses on the relationship between language, ideology and power, with the emphasis on the impacts of social structures and contexts in discursive practices, events and texts. It is devoted to exposing the underlying ideology which is hidden in the discourse, and helps the readers to foster and arouse their awareness of critical reading.This paper aims at investigating the interrelationship among language, power and ideology as well as the linguistic and ideological differences of the political news reports. The author uses Fairclough’s three-dimensional model and Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar as the theoretic framework to conduct the critical discourse analysis of the news reported by China Daily over the Huangyan Island disputes between China and the Philippines. The study is divided into three parts:in the description part, the study uses the analytical tools of transitivity, lexical classification, modality and thematic choice; in the interpretive part, it analyzes the news source from the perspective of intertextuality; in the explanatory part, by studying the social political and economic background, the author revealed the hidden ideology in the news discourse.The major findings are as follows:first, the social, cultural, historical and political contexts affect a lot about the formation of the ideology. When conducting the critical discourse analysis, it is essential to take these factors into consideration; second, the mass media use language and discourse to express their political stance and the ideological orientation which is usually the ideology of the government that they represented. Language is the carrier of the ideology, while the ideology sometimes influences the choice of the words; third, the news, especially for political news, is not so objective than they claimed. The ideology, which is formed under the different social, cultural, historical and political backgrounds, will influence the expressions of the reporters when representing their different political stance and ideological orientation.On the Huangyan Island disputes between China and the Philippines, China takes the maintaining of its sovereignty and territorial integrity as the core value of the nation. The Philippine Navy harassed and arrested the Chinese fishermen in the Chinese territory and clamored the ownership of the Huangyan Island, and all these actions have violated China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity; China Daily, as a window of the Chinese media, has revealed the hard-line stance of the Chinese government.Through the theoretic research, the author once again proved the feasibility and significance of Fairclough’s three-dimensional model and Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar in analyzing the hidden ideology in the news discourses, and revealed the injustice of the news, which will help people to obtain the real and valuable messages from the news more effectively.