Ideological Constructions In The External Communication News Discourse Of China’s "COVID-19 Vaccine"

Based on Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA)and Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar(SFG),ideological discourse analysis from a socio-functional perspective attaches importance to the complex interplay between discourse and social structure,and gives priority to the relationship between linguistic representation and ideology in terms of both meaning and function.There have been countless studies on the relationship between linguistic features and interpretations of ideology through CDA,yet few studies have been conducted in the field of ideological discourse analysis from a socio-functional perspective.Therefore,this thesis analyzes the linguistic representations of news discourse from a socio-functional perspective,aiming at revealing the constructed ideology behind news discourse.Ideological discourse analysis from a socio-functional perspective consists the stage of both description and interpretation: the stage of description focuses on the textual stage of the linguistic representation of ideology in terms of three systems: transitivity system,mood system,and theme-rheme system;the stage of interpretation pays close attention to how linguistic features construct ideology in terms of ideational metafunction,interpersonal metafunction,and textual metafunction,which has an enormous impact on social readers.In the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic,China’s prevention and control initiatives as well as the underlying philosophy are worthy of examination,especially in the development and use of the “COVID-19 vaccine”.Therefore,from a socio-functional perspective,this thesis analyzes the linguistic representations in 30 English news discourses about China’s “COVID-19vaccine” in People’s Daily in June 2021 as a corpus to reveal the ideology of news discourse.The three research questions in this thesis are as follows:(1)What ideology of China’s“COVID-19 vaccine” news discourse is constructed in People’s Daily?(2)How is the ideology of China’s “COVID-19 vaccine” news discourse represented through linguistic description?(3)How is the ideological construction interpreted in China’s “COVID-19 vaccine” news discourse from a socio-functional perspective?Through a combination of quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis,the following findings are obtained in this thesis.(1)Under the severe situation of the COVID-19 pandemic,China has internally adhered to the principles of “following the COVID-19 vaccination policy together”,“sharing the responsibility to fight the COVID-19 pandemic” and “sharing social resources”.Meanwhile,China has externally provided assistance for the “COVID-19 vaccine”,carried out cooperation on the “COVID-19 vaccine”,shared experience about the “COVID-19vaccine” and recognized the publicity of the “COVID-19 vaccine”.China’s performance in domestic society and in international society illustrates that China’s “COVID-19 vaccine” news discourse in People’s Daily is committed to construct the ideology of “a community of shared destiny”.(2)Linguistic representations of “COVID-19 vaccine” news discourse from a socio-functional perspective have their own unique characteristics.In regard of the transitivity system,it is revealed that material processes are used more frequently than the other five processes.For the mood system,the frequency of giving information is higher than that of demanding information in the selected corpus,and tenses were dominated by the simple past,simple present and present perfect tenses,with a high proportion of medium-valued modal words.In terms of the theme-rheme system,indirect discourse representation(IDRs)and active voice are more frequently chosen to describe news discourse.(3)Through the interpretation from a socio-functional perspective,the journalists of People’s Daily realized the constructive role of the ideological discourse of “a community of shared destiny” in the process of news production.In regard to ideational metafunction,material,verbal,and relational processes were favored for constructing the social facts of the practicality and effectiveness of China’s COVID-19 vaccine and China’s contribution to the control of the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide.In terms of interpersonal metafunction,through the effective combination of simple present tense and simple past tense and the use of medium-valued modals,journalists are committed to presenting a friendly and helpful image of China to readers and achieving effective interaction among them.The application of unmarked themes and active voice makes a real difference in realizing textual metafunction.In conclusion,the discourse analysis of China’s “COVID-19 vaccine” news discourse from a socio-functional perspective shows that the ideology of “a community of shared destiny”constructed by People’s Daily in the process of external communication has played an active role in promoting the response to the global pandemic crisis.This thesis expands the application horizon of DA from a socio-functional perspective in the field of news discourse research,and provides a reference for subsequent news discourse on “COVID-19 vaccine”,and even the news studies on the COVID-19 pandemic.It is hoped that this study will promote readers to read international news critically and enhance their ability to grasp objective facts.