A Critical Discourse Analysis Of American Media’s News Reports On Central American Immigration From A Cognitive Perspective

This thesis takes news reports on Central American immigration from the New York Times and Fox News as the research corpus,intending to make a critical discourse analysis of the Central American immigration news discourse under the guidance of cognitive linguistics.The Central American immigration is taken as the research object because Central American immigration has attracted wide attention in the United States and even in the world.The Republican Party and the Democratic Party of the United States have very different attitudes towards Central American immigrants and immigration policies.News agencies in the United States devote much of their coverage to the issue of Central American immigration,but their reports vary depending on their political affiliations.What’s more,due to the limitations of ordinary people’s understanding of political issues,they need to improve the overall cognition of events through media reports.However,up to now,mainstream critical discourse analysis has been relying on systemic functional linguistics to study its linguistic features and function.It has not paid enough attention to human cognition,that is,there is a lack of analysis on the dynamic cognitive process of the information intended to be transmitted by the media and the information actually received by the readers.Cognitive linguistics provides a toolbox for critical discourse analysis,such as schematization,which is one of the primary cognitive construal operations of human beings.According to the principle of mechanics,Talmy(1988)proposes force-dynamic schemas,which use the force interactions between tangible objects to explain the abstract causal relationship of language expressions.It is an essential cognitive model for people to construct and understand social discourse.This thesis takes Hart’s typology of construal operation and Talmy’s theory of force dynamics as the theoretical framework,and adopts both the quantitative and qualitative method,to investigate the frequency and conceptualization of eight force-dynamic schemas in immigrant discourse and analyze the discursive strategies and hidden ideologies.The major findings of the thesis as follows: firstly,news reports from the New York Times describe the problematic situation of the immigrants: it is hard for them either to enter the United States or to stay here.While news reports from Fox News describe that although facing difficult situations,some immigrants could manage to enter or to stay in the United States.As for the reasons of immigration,NYT often links them to the terrible situation in their hometown,while Fox News believes immigrants are driven by the economic profits.Secondly,force-dynamic schemas conceptualize immigration as a‘force vector’ which moves toward the United States in the end,and its impact will be felt unless it weakens.Furthermore,the role assignment,the direction and patterns of force interaction will activate different conceptualizations.The selection of these elements in force-dynamic schemas by the news media is not arbitrary.On the one hand,these indicators hidden under the surface of language can reflect news media’s opinion on Central American immigration and immigration policies and the relationship between the two.On the other hand,they can also invoke similar conceptualization in the mind of readers.Thirdly,due to the different interests of the party behind them,the news reports are constructed accordingly.Fox News is a representative in the right conservative camp.Generally,they hold a negative attitude towards immigrants because they represent the interests of many white middle classes in the United States,and they think the immigrants will damage their interests.While the New York Times stands on the left and is in support of the Democratic Party,which has traditionally been more protective of the interests of ethnic minorities,so it has taken a positive attitude in the reform of legalizing illegal immigration.This governance tendency stems from the party’s dependence on the votes of the southern states with a majority of ethnic minorities.The cognitive linguistic approach to critical discourse analysis can not only help readers better analyze the ideology hidden in immigration discourse,but also help readers to understand the facts themselves further,to be closer to the actual society,and to view current events more rationally.