| As a research method of linguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA) was firstly proposed from a book titled Language and Control written by English linguist Roger Fowler in the 1970 s. Based on Halliday’s systemic functional grammar, CDA mainly focuses on inequality and injustice in social life, aiming to reveal the underlying ideologies in language and to explain the relations among language, power and ideology.Along with the rapid development of high-tech, the world has already entered the information age, which means mass media play an increasingly significant role in all aspects of our work and life. Public discourse is the production of mass media, among which the news discourse has been drawing great attention from scholars in the field of CDA. Far from the objectivity as it claims, news discourse embeds various hidden information in language such as political orientation, attitude and ideology, etc. Since CDA is an effective method to analyze news discourses and disclose hidden information in language, this thesis applies CDA to the related research.Owing to the fact that APEC is the most influential economic forum in the Asia-Pacific region, media from every corner of the world has given much attention to it. This thesis involves three research questions: 1. How to uncover the underlying information in news reports? 2. What ideologies are presented in these selected fifty samples? 3. What are the differences in ideologies and power structures between 2011 and 2014 APEC news reports and what are the factors resulting in these differences?Combining Fairclough’s three-dimensional model with some other analytical tools, this thesis do both synchronic and diachronic contrastive studies on the selected reports about APEC Summit in 2011 and 2014 from the perspective of CDA. These fifty samples are chosen from American, Chinese and Japanese mainstream media,ranging from CNN, The Washington Post, People’s Daily, China Daily and Asahi Shimbun. The analysis of news reports is conducted at the following three levels: atthe description level, linguistic features of news discourse are investigated from lexical choice and transitivity aspects; at the interpretation level, the production process of samples from five mass media are explored under the perspective of news sources and modes of speech; at the explanation level, reasons for the differences in social practice are illustrated by analyzing history, political and economic context.The research results show: Firstly, journalists usually employ writing devices to convey veiled information in news reports. Secondly, news language is far from objectivity and fairness as it claims because journalists are often influenced by the inherent ideologies and they consciously convey their own viewpoints and attitudes to sway readers’ judgments. Thirdly, not only different countries’ news media, but also different news agencies in the same country have different attitudes towards the same important issue. Fourthly, state relations can influence news media to depict and evaluate the national image.This study can provide people with the following enlightenment: Firstly, the thesis provides a new research method of combination synchronic with diachronic contrastive study to analyze news discourses from the perspective of CDA. Secondly,it demonstrates the importance of critical consciousness. In addition, it reminds readers to accept information critically and train their critical awareness consciously.Thirdly, news media play a vital role in conveying concealed ideologies. Moreover,news media can play a crucial role in delivering information and shaping national image. Therefore, countries worldwide should strengthen their own national media’s construction. |
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