A Critical Discourse Analysis Based On Cognitive Reference Points And Construal

News discourse,as one of the main media through which the public can know about current affairs,plays a very significant role in people's daily life.News discourse,a kind of public discourses,can reach the purpose of “controlling” the masses.However,not all news reports can present social affairs to people objectively and righteously.In short,the media can be influenced by various factors more or less while reporting news;critical discourse analysis has provided awonderful example for analyzing the impetus hidden behind language.Critical discourse analysis,as a discourse analysis theory,mainly studies on the relationship among language,power and ideology.The traditional way to analyze discourse with CDA was mainly based on Halliday's Systematic Functional Grammar,and scholars paid too much attention to discourse analysis,ignoring the cognitive mechanism in the production of discourse and the comprehension of discourse.O'Halloran,based on critical discourse analysis theoretical tool,pointed out a new analyzing method,namely,the combination of cognitive linguistics and CDA.This thesis,through combining construal and cognitive reference points,aims at further elaborating the importance of cognitive theories in CDA.The current study,based on news reports about the Paris Climate Change Conference(COP21 for short)in The New York Times,tries to disclose the ideology and power relation hidden behind news discourse,and further discuss how news reports “control” and “mislead” the public.After analyzing all reports from four different levels with IRC model,namely,lexicon,sentence,discourse and rhetoric,this thesis finds out that when The New York Times make reports on the COP21,they choose different perspectives and angles to describe different countries.In specific,they affirmed and even praised contributions developed countries have made to the global climate,but warped and even distorted efforts developing countries have made to global climate issues.The New York Times transmitted their ideologies and values to the public through language,which will also influence the public and reach their purpose of obtaining more supports.To sum up,this paper,based on previous studies on news discourse,applying the theoretical framework of CDA with IRC model,relying on specific news reports on COP21 from The New York Times,discloses the fact hidden behind news reports.In the current period of discourse hegemony,disclosing the deep relationship among language expressions,ideology and power can not only find out how the media use language to transmit their ideologies,but also help the public deeply know about the fact,go closer to the real society and treat current affairs more reasoningly and objectively.