An Analysis Of New York Times Editorials’ Discourse Practice Of Anti-Trump’s Immigration Policy

With the "linguistic turn" of western philosophy and the development of linguistics,the study of discourse gradually becomes an important research direction.Taking the New York Times’ editorials’ discourse practice of anti-Trump s immigration policy as the research object this dissertation attempts to analyze the ideology and power relationship behind the discourse and rethink the mainstream discourse controlled by the political correctness norms.Based on Van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach,this dissertation analyzes 47 New York Times’ editorials.Firstly,this paper analyzes the five parts of editorials from the perspective of discourse structure:discourse genre,title,rhetoric strategies,reported speeches and polarized description.Secondly,it analyzes the personal cognition and social cognition implied in the editorials’ discourse from the perspective of cognitive component.Finally,the micro and macro social structures behind discourse are analyzed from the perspective of social component.With a series of qualitative analysis,the dissertation finds that the New York Times’ editorials created a negative image of Trump’s immigration policy through negative headlines,metaphors,reported speeches and polarized descriptions.Meanwhile,there is an anti-racist ideology as well as a political stance of supporting democrat implied behind the negative discourse.Afterwards,the dissertation rethinks the exclusion and control of other discourse by the mainstream politically correct discourse through Foucault’s discourse power theory.The dissertation finds that the editorials’ discourse of the New York Times constructed a negative image of trump’s immigration policy.At the same time,as a mainstream discourse,it excludes and suppresses other discourses that support Trump’s immigration policy,and covers up deep social problems with political correctness norms.At the end of this dissertation,some suggestions about how to weaken the control of mainstream discourse are proposed,including:1.Revealing the ideology behind discourse through critical discourse analysis.2.Recognizing and understanding the control strategies of discourse power.3.Rethinking political correctness discourse.