An Analysis Of Values Of 2011-2015 American Pulitzer Prize-winning Commentary

News commentary as a text form for expression of author's opinions possesses a stronger subjectivity,and strives to influence social life by speeches and comments,compared with the news writing that deems objective reality as the principle.In recent years,news commentary has drawn more and more social attention because that it is not only a direct expression of author's spiritual individuality and thinking habit,but also a mirror reflecting a certain socio-cultural background and its ideology to some extent.As the mainstream award in the American and global press circles,Pulitzer Prize has experienced a brilliant history of nearly hundreds of years since it was established in 1917.For a century,Pulitzer Prize has become the witness of journalism's glory and dream in the wake of the progress of American society and journalism,and profoundly affected the political and social life of Americans over the past one hundred years as well.This paper took 2011-2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning commentary as the study object,and adopted discourse analysis method,with the purpose of explaining the values system and ideologies that hide behind texts.Measures of value behind every judgment were discussed through reading and analyzing the specific value judgments of 50 award-winning commentary in this period;subsequently,by means of the analysis and synthesis of these measures of value,the value system of Pulitzer Prize-winning commentary in the recent years was teased out,namely individualism,liberty,equality,democracy,rule of law,concern and love,peace,justice and rationality.These values,especially liberalism,rationalism,Christianity and pacifism,own profound ideological origins.Pulitzer Prize-winning commentary works not only reveal the general values in American commentary writing,but also reflect the mainstream American value system to a certain degree.Values are both of the core of social culture and the basis of social order.News commentary stands in the frontal zone of public opinion filed,bears the responsibility of aggregating social consensus,promoting conflict resolution and establishing social orders,and plays a certain guiding role in the value orientation of American society.