A CDA Of News On Sino-Japan Dispute Of Diaoyu Islands In The Japan Times And The New York Times

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) or critical linguistics (CL), invented by Fowler, etc. in 1979, aims to investigate the relationship among language, power and ideology. CDA practitioners view discourse as a kind of social practice and aim to reveal and analyze the ideological significance coded in the text.This thesis conducts a critical analysis of news concerning Japan’s "purchase" on Diaoyu Islands. The six samples are selected from The Japan Times and The New York Times in terms of three main events:(a) Japanese policemen arrested fourteen Chinese nationals after some of them landed on the islands; (b) Japan deported fourteen Chinese detained in island dispute; (c) Chinese staged anti-Japan rallies after Japanese landed on the islands. In the three events of the dispute, Japan is involved as the participant and America is linked to this dispute by ties of common interest. In this sense, the news reports from the newspapers of Japan and America may be ideologically significant. Fairclough’s three-dimensional model and Halliday’s three metafunctions of language are employed as the theoretical framework in this thesis. The comparative analyses are conducted in three dimensions:(a) the dimension of text; (b) the dimension of discursive practice; (c) the dimension of social practice. In the dimension of text, the analysis focuses on the linguistic features; in the dimension of discursive practice, an intertextual analysis is conducted with the modes of speech and the reporting verbs; and in the dimension of social practice, the comparative analysis is conducted in a wider background to explore how the news discourses are shaped by the social context.The critical analysis of the six samples reveals that ideological inclinations are embedded in the news concerning Diaoyu Islands dispute. Through a comparative analysis of news coverage in two newspapers, we find that The New York Times and The Japan Times show quite different ideologies. The New York Times provided relative neutral and objective news reports. The Japan Times did not present the overall coverage in order to omit the information adverse to Japan. Finally the thesis unveils the ideological opinions hidden behind the news discourses and promotes the readers’ critical sensibility and awareness when they read related news.