Ideologies In News Reports On The Sino-US Trade War:Critical Discourse Analysis

After the tenth round of trade talks between China and the United States in May2019,the trade war entered a new fierce phase which attracted the attention of news media workers at home and abroad.Reporters may intentionally or unintentionally embed their own ideologies in news reports to affect readers’ interpretation of the trade war,so it is of significance to study the ideologies behind news reports.Guided by Fairclough’s TDF and Halliday’s SFG,this thesis makes an in-depth investigation of the news reports on the Sino-US trade war in China Daily and The New York Times.30 news reports are collected dating from the beginning of May to the end of September 2019 in the both official English websites.Through quantitative and qualitative methods,the author mainly compares and analyzes the distributional and ideological differences in the use of transitivity,modality,news sources and reporting modes in China Daily and The New York Times in terms of description and interpretation,and explains the reasons why news reports imply ideologies from the perspective of psychocultural context and media cultural context.After the comparative analysis of the news reports,this study brings out the different ideologies of these two media.The New York Times mainly shows the following two ideologies.(1)China has threatened the leadership of the United States,and the United States should penalize and contain China.(2)The American people do not support or even sit down on the Sino-US trade war,however,the United States hopes that the people can make sacrifices for the country.In contrast,China Daily mainly embodies the following two ideologies.(1)Peaceful development is the unswerving mission of China.Most importantly,China’s development does not undermine stable interest groups.(2)China welcomes cooperation with other countries,especially the United States,to achieve win-win.These ideologies mentioned above can be argued that the reporters’ own psychoculture and media organization values are the fundamental reasons for the construction of the discourse,which distinguish from other papers.This thesis confirms that news discourse without exception conveys the thoughts and consciousness of reporters.What’s more,the revelation of ideologies during this struggling phase can provide some advice for researchers who intend to explore how ideologies of China and the United States change in different periods of the Sino-US trade war.At the same time,this thesis can remind readers to be critical when they read news discourse.