A CDA Approach To The Untrustworthiness Of False Economic News Discourse

As one of the main intermediaries that publish and transmit economicinformation, the influence of economic news is rising. Every day, there is a lot ofeconomic news appearing on multiple kinds of news media. Among these newsreports, most of them are objective and authentic while some of them are false. Falseeconomic news always spreads fast and widely and has great repercussions. It alwayscauses great harm to economy, society and even people’s normal lives. Analyzing thiskind of news thoroughly can help us reveal the untrustworthiness of this kind of newsdiscourses so that in the future, we will be able to detect this kind of news discourses.In this thesis, we analyze30news discourses to investigate howuntrustworthiness is reflected in fuzziness and subjectivity so as to provide insightsfor the nature of false economic news discourses and linguistic reflections ofuntrustworthiness. This thesis utilizes Fairclough’s three-dimensional model withreference to lexicogrammatical resources of subjectivity and fuzziness to conduct aresearch of untrustworthiness in three dimensions: description, interpretation andexplanation.The findings of this study reveal that first fuzziness of this kind of news can bedetected at three levels: textual level, discourse practice level and social practice level.At textual level, in terms of lexical choices, there are six kinds of words that showfuzziness of false news discourses: numeral words, hedges, gradable words, epistemicverbs, epistemic adverbs and epistemic adjectives. Hedges are divided into twocategories: adaptors and rounders. These six kinds of words all realize fuzziness oflanguage and when fuzziness is detected in the description of vital information,readers may have doubts about the credibility of the whole report. At textual level,fuzziness is also construed through modality. The usages of modal operators can makethese reports seem fuzzy. At discourse practice level, fuzziness is realized throughnews sources, especially semi-specified news sources and vague news sources. The usages of these news sources can lead to questions of the credibility of these reports.At social practice level, the reasons for the fuzziness in these reports are analyzed insocial context. One typical reason is that when reporters do not have time or source tofind out the whole truth of the incident in question, they will not be able to describethe incident in question accurately so that the language of their reports is fuzzy.Second, subjectivity can also be detected at these three levels. At textual level,journalists’ subjectivity is realized through lexical choices and modality. The choicesof words that contain the reporter’s emotion or cognition reveal the tendency andstance of the reporter. Pragmatic markers also indicate the reporter’s own opinions.Modal operators, adjuncts of mood and modality manifest what the reporter thinksabout the incident in question too. At discourse practice level, the usages of newssources that provide information in accordance with reporters’ own opinions revealhow subjective these reporters are. At social practice level, the reasons whysubjectivity can be detected in these reports are analyzed. Sometimes reporters mayhave already formed an opinion towards the incident in question because ofstereotypes or prejudice before they write the reports, so that in these news discourses,we can see subjectivity.