| Critical discourse analysis is a new branch of modern linguistic research.It is an interdisciplinary linguistic research aimed at studying and explaining social problems.It aims to reveal the hidden ideology in the language by analyzing the linguistic formal feature of the text,and further explore the relationship between the hidden language,power and ideology behind the language.Since the 1970 s,critical discourse analysis has been applied to news discourse by many scholars.However,most scholars tend to study political news,military news and other texts with obvious ideological control.Little attention has been paid to seemingly neutral environmental news,especially on smog.In recent years,smog pollution has attracted much attention.Since 2013,with the rapid development of China’s economy,environmental problems have been highlighted.Driven by the Internet,China’s smog weather and air pollution have gradually become high-frequency words in environmental news at home and abroad.Environmental issues represented by smog have been transformed from professional issues to social issues and become the focus of global attention.This thesis makes a comparative study of nine China smog-related news reports selected from China Daily and The Washington Post.This study takes Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar as a paradigm and adopts Fairclough’s three-dimensional discourse analysis model as the theoretical framework.On the textual level,the linguistic features of the selected news text are analyzed from transitivity and modality.On the level of discursive practice,through the analysis of news sources and reporting modes,the formation process of news discourse is explained.On the social practice level,the reasons for the differences between the two newspapers are explained from the perspectives of news values,social system background and reporters’ ideologies.Ideology is embedded in the two newspapers about China smog-related news reports.They convey their ideologies through different language expressions.From the textual level,the reporters of the two newspapers differ in their choice of transitivity and modality.The use of transitivity can enable reporters to better express their views and wishes.Modality is the ideological determinant of discourse,which leads to its use in the construction of political ideology.From the discursive practice level,reporters can influence readers’ cognition of news events by using different news sources and reporting modes.From the social practice level,reporters’ reports are not based on facts,but are influenced by news values,social system background,and reporters’ ideologies,so as to better spread the ideas of their respective countries and safeguard the interests of their countries.This study found that both newspapers use ideology in language to effect readers in this way to maintain and strengthen their respective government positions.Smog news is also permeated through potential ideology to some extent.China Daily,as the mouthpiece of China,strongly describes China’s determination and efforts to deal with smog actively and is committed to shaping and displaying China’s positive image.The Washington Post,on the other hand,portrays a Chinese government that is economically superior and deviates from the people-oriented ideology and is committed to creating a negative image.It is hoped that the study can contribute to the critical analysis of news discourse,to enhance people’s ability to identify and analyze the news facts described by the media with critical eyes in news reading,and to view various motives objectively and intentions hidden behind news events. |
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