| Since critical discourse analysis (CDA) came out last century, it has been a major approach to analyze discourse now. It aims to uncover the ideology behind the discourse and shows the relationship between power, ideology and language. Critical discourse analysis considers discourse as social practice. Discourse not only reflects social reality, but also builds social ideology and relationship. What’s more, the combination of corpus approach with critical discourse analysis has become a new research paradigm. As the primary means of mass media, news is the main subject of CDA.In August, 2013, chemical weapons were used in Syria, which drew attention from all over the world. A large number of reports have been given by American and Chinese media. So the current research chooses the news reports from America and China as the research object. And a comparative critical discourse analysis will be done to reveal the differences and similarities in image constructing which shows the differences and similarities in power and ideology. This research takes the news reports from the VOA and China Daily about Syria chemical weapons as the research object. Two mini-corpora will be built and the Fairclough’s three-dimensional mode will be applied to analyze the reports. Corpus approach will be well integrated with CDA in the research. Fairclough’s social theory of discourse covers three dimensions: text, discursive practice and social practice. As for the description of text, the analysis is done based on Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar. To be specific, key words will be extracted and selected. Then the chosen key words, together with their contexts, will be analyzed in terms of transitivity and modality. As for discursive practice, reporting mode and news sources will be investigated. The statistics of reporting mode and news source will be done by searching verbal words, such as’say, tell’. As for social practice, the relationship between China and Syria and between America and Syria will be explored comparatively.Based on comparative analysis, it is found that there are differences in the description of text, discursive practice, and social practice. As for the description of text, only material, relational and verbal processes are analyzed in terms of transitivity. In material process, VOA used more negative words to report the issue than those in CD. The intention of VOA is to make readers accept what US will do about Syria event. Relational process shows a different evaluation and characterization of the event from VOA and CD. China regards chemical weapons unacceptable. As for US, it is a disaster and against inhuman spirits. VOA wants readers to feel the seriousness of the event. Verbal process directly presents the different attitude towards the event. According to CD, chemical weapons are unacceptable but the issue should be dealt with peacefully. While according to VOA, US agrees to solve the problem in a peaceful way. But military action also should be taken into consideration. When it comes to the modality, five kinds of modal verbs are frequently used in VOA, which includes "would, will, could, can and must". In VOA, "must" is more frequently used, showing the strong attitude of US government, who even demands UN and Syria to act as it wishes. All these show that U.S considers himself the world police and wants to play a leading role in solving this event. But in CD, only three kinds of model verbs are frequently used, which include "would, will and should". CD uses these modal verbs to show its wish and advice:peace is the best option.As for discursive practice, VOA uses more indirect discourses to make readers accept its viewpoints in a more subtle way. CD uses more direct discourses to show the truth. When it comes to news source, the percentages of specific news sources and unidentified news sources in VOA are 60% and 38% respectively. The percentages of specific news sources and unidentified news sources in CD are 67% and 29% respectively. In VOA, specific news sources are mostly from US government and UN. In CD, specific news sources are mostly from China government and UN. VOA and CD both want to use specific news sources to show their attitude directly. VOA uses unidentified news sources to negate Syria government and chemical weapons. There are two reasons for doing so. One is that it hopes readers to accept what it said. The other is to shirk responsibilities. CD uses unidentified news sources to report something that is not very sure, which shows that CD reports the issue from the reality.All these differences can contribute to the social practice, namely, different ideologies and stance. China is a peace lover and promote harmonious world. US has always been pursuing expansionism since Second World War. The relationship between US and Syria is not good. U.S wants to take advantage of this issue to overthrow the Syria government. To sum up, although VOA and CD report the same thing, they built different images of the event due to their different political stances and interests, as ideology is embedded in language and also influences the production of discourse.The study uncovers the differences and similarities in image constructing which shows the differences and similarities in power and ideology, which can help us to understand this issue better. This study also makes contribution in methodology, showing a combination of corpus approach and the three-dimensional mode. Systemic Functional Grammar is also well integrated. This combination helps avoid subjectivity and thus more convincing, providing methodological enlightenment for further study. |
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