A Contrastive Analysis Of Chinese Smog-related News In Chinese And American Newspapers

Critical Discourse Analysis is an interdisciplinary language research method that mainly studies and interprets kinds of social problems.It not only pays attention to the analysis of discourses' text features,but also studies the social background of specific discourse.It can be used to study various kinds of discourses,such as novels,poetry,academic works and mass media.Among them,the news discourse is particularly noteworthy,because news reports have always been known as objective and impartial.This study mainly uses the Critical Discourse Analysis to analyze the Chinese smog-related news in Chinese and American newspapers,so it is a contrastive analysis of news reports between China and the United States.The systematic functional grammar of Halliday and intertextuality are the theoretical basis of this study.The transitivity,modality and intertextuality are mainly used in this thesis.The author selects 60 news samples,of which 30 are from the Chinese mainstream newspaper China Daily and 30 come from three major American newspapers The New York Times,The Washington Post,and Los Angeles Times.This thesis mainly solves the following three questions?(1)What language strategies are used in China Daily and these three American newspapers to report China's smog-related weather? What are the similarities and differences in these language strategies?(2)What are the possible reasons for these differences in these news discourses? What are the deep meaning and ideology do Chinese and American newspapers want to convey when reporting Chinese smog weather?(3)Is there any difference between Chinese and American newspapers in reporting China's smog? If so,what? Through the analysis,the author finds that although transitivity,modality and intertextuality are all used by Chinese and American reporters,their purposes of reporting the news and ideologies are not the same.Chinese reporters mainly let readers know the real situation of China's smog,the measures taken by Chinese government and attitudes of people of all walks of life,which show an active and responsible image of China to the world.While American reporters emphasize the seriousness of Chinese smog,the purpose of the government's measures and negative attitudes of common people,from which we can see the biases of the American reporters toward China.All of these indicate that although news reports are objective and truthful,reporters are always influenced by their social background and ideologies.It is hoped that this study can make contribution to the Critical Discourse Analysis and strengthen readers' critical awareness when they read news reports.