A Critical Analysis Of Reported Speech On The South China Sea Disputes In Political News Discourse

The seemingly objective and impartial news discourse is not neutral,it can effectively spread the attitudes and ideologies of the reporter or the media as well as the country.In news discourse,critical discourse analysis and reported speech by using reporting modes,reporting sources and reporting verbs to spread attitudes and perspectives.The issue of the South China Sea has been the focus of international attention,since January 22^nd 2013,when the Philippines formally filed an arbitration against China to the United Nations Tribunal for the Law of the Sea,it has got much attention from many countries of domestic and abroad.Based on the theory of reported speech,this paper studies the phenomenon of reported speech in political news discourses.Taking 100 news discourses in China Daily and The Guardian as the corpus,this paper uses critical discourse analysis to analyze the characteristics of reported speech,explores the realization of its news value.In this paper,the author respectively selects 50 news reports on the South China Sea dispute in the mainstream newspapers of China and Britain through the method of the qualitative and quantitative analysis.China Daily and The Guardian explored how the two major media express their different positions and attitudes to the same event through the language means of reported speech.Through the analysis,it is found that in the reports of the South China Sea dispute,the two newspapers still exist obvious differences.First of all,in terms of modes of reported speech,both newspapers use the highest proportion of indirect speech,a feature more evident in China Daily.However,56.78%of the indirect speeches in China Daily are used in“reporting news”.Reporters use indirect speeches to“project”the words of important people,power agencies or social organizations in pursuit of objective truth,try to avoid personal opinions or comments.In The Guardian,the reporter also cited 38.23%of the indirect speeches,the views and attitudes of the indirect speech of The Guardian have impacts on the readers’understanding of the news reports.Secondly,the proportion of direct speech and preset direct speech in The Guardian is higher than that of China Daily.The result in The Guardian means that the objectivity and impartiality of the reports needs to be promoted.In terms of sources of reported speech,China Daily is inclined to use explicit sources,the author keeps his original sources unchanged,while The Guardian prefers to use implicit sources which are intended to be used by reporters in a circuitous way,the purpose is to express his attitudes in the South China Sea disputes.In terms of verbs of reported speech,both newspapers use a large number of neutral reporting verbs,and both strive to present an objective and impartial image to the international community.China Daily uses more positive verbs than The Guardian whatever china or other countries.This shows that China Daily focuses on revealing the truth objectively and fairly.The Guardian uses more negative verbs,which shows that they were more critical,especially when reporting on the related contents of China,which reflects its unfriendly attitude towards china.In conclusion,we’ll know that it cannot be absolutely objective in news discourse and reported speeches in the news are not objective enough.They are inevitably drawn from the viewpoint of the reporter.By analyzing the reported speech and revealing the ideology hidden in the language,this study helps people to understand and view impartially and objectively and to cultivate the habit of the reader’s critical reading and thinking.The research shows that reported speech is not only a tool to indirectly present the reporter’s consciousness in news reporting,but also a means for the reporter to influence the reader’s consciousness,attitudes and views on news event.