Critical Discourse Analysis Based On Fairclough’s Three-dimensional Model

Due to historical and cultural reasons,the United States has formed a deep-rooted gun culture.The concomitant problems including excessive guns and violent crimes have been existing for a long period.In a large number of shootings,the police-related incidents take a large proportion of the relevant news reports which can be found in American mainstream media.Based on Fairclough’s Three-dimensional Model theory as the framework,this thesis adopts Appraisal Theory,Transitivity system and corpus linguistic methods to conduct a critical discourse analysis of news reports on police fatal shooting incidents from The Washington Post.According to three stages in Fairclough’s Three-dimensional Model,the thesis analysis is carried out from three aspects respectively.First,at description stage,the linguistic features of news reports are analyzed from the perspective of high-frequency words,headlines and transitivity.Second,at interpretation stage,the production of news discourses is illustrated by analyzing news sources and reporting modes.Finally,at explanation stage,the intention of the news agency for reporting police fatal shootings,residential segregation,the stereotype of colored people,aggressive police culture and unequal legal system are explained to illustrate how different contexts affect text production.The findings indicate:1.In news samples on police fatal shooting incidents from The Washington Post,most of the High-frequency words are neutral.Attitudinal resources in headlines are mainly divided into affect system and judgement system.Material process,verbal process,relational process and mental process are mainly adopted in news samples.Journalists portray a negative police image who misuse gun during law enforcement.2.The reports imply that the journalists and the public condemn the police for violent law enforcement and criticize government inaction by analyzing news sources and reporting modes.3.The intention of The Washington Post to report news on police fatal shooting incidents,residential segregation,stereotype of colored people,American police culture and current legal system all affect the production of the news reports on police fatal shooting incidents.This study enriches the research scope of critical discourse analysis.It also helps readers to figure out how journalists incorporate ideology into words and readers can view reports on police fatal shooting incidents rationally and objectively.