Critical Discourse Analysis Of Chinese And American News Reports On The "Russia-Ukraine Conflict"

Critical Discourse Analysis focuses on analyzing the language features of the discourse and studying the social background of the discourse.It reveals the ideology and power that lie behind the text.Norman Fairclough has made great contributions to Critical Discourse Analysis and his Three-Dimensional Model is a kind of efficient ways to analyze news discourse.Since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict on February24,2022,the international community has continued to pay wide attention to it.The international conflict has attracted the attention and coverage of the news media,including China Daily and The New York Times.These two newspapers represent the mainstream newspapers respectively in China and the United States.They are relatively authoritative and representative to convey the main views and attitudes towards this event.Therefore,from the perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis,with Fairclough’s Three-Dimensional Model as the theoretical framework,this research puts forward three resear ch questions to analyze the news reports of the Russia-Ukraine conflict by two mainstream newspaper in China and the United States and the ideology hidden behind their language:(1)At the descriptive dimension,what are the language features used in the two newspapers?(2)At the interpretative dimension,how do the news sources and reporting modes reflect the differences of ideologies between Chinese and American news reports?(3)At the explanative dimension,how can the different political background of Chinese and American newspapers explain their ideological differences?In this research,news reports about the Russia-Ukraine conflict from China Daily and The New York Times are collected from February to December 2022,and 10 reports(each report is about 1,413 words,approximately 28,278 words in total)are selected from each of the two newspapers according to their different reports on the same event.Corpus analysis tools UAM and Ant Conc 3.5.7 are used for quantitative analysis,and Fairclough’s Three-Dimensional Model is used for qualitative analysis.The results of the analysis indicate that there are differences between the two news media in their coverage of the same issue.At the descriptive dimension,the transitivity and modality of the news reports are analyzed.In term of transitivity system,China Daily often uses positive verbs such as “encourage”,“support” and “welcome” to express China’s support for the peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.It also encourages a peaceful settlement of the issue.In The New York Times,when the United States as the actor,it uses verbs such as “deteriorate” and “destroy” to build a negative image of Russia.As to modality system,in China Daily,the median value modal words are mostly used to focused on reporting the Russia-Ukraine conflict that will make important influence on the global economic and the global peace from a neutral point of view and continues to make great effort to the peace talks between Russian and Ukraine.In The New York Times,it is clearly seen from the use of median valued modal words when the Biden administration talked about the conflict between Russia and Ukraine,President Biden emphasized the consequences of Russia-Ukraine conflict and indicated that the United States will take more actions to sanction and suppress Russia.At the interpretative dimension,both China Daily and The New York Times mostly use the specific source,but the proportion of specific source in China Daily are higher than that in The New York Times.Chinese media are more inclined to provide readers with clear sources of information to reflect the authenticity and objectivity of their reports.In addition,the distribution of direct speech in China Daily is higher than that of The New York Times,while the distribution of indirect speech in China Daily is lower than that of The New York Times.The New York Times used more indirect speech,which could not only dilute and avoid responsibility,enhance the credibility of the reports,but also infiltrate the reporters’ views and editorial choices into the reports.At the explanative dimension,the different political backgrounds of China and America lead to the differences in the news reports of the two countries,which reflects the completely different diplomatic styles and principles of them.Through the analysis of the political background of the two news media,it can be seen that the hostility held by the US government to China and China’s impartial attitude toward the Russia-Ukraine conflict,and so on.China has always adhered to an independent foreign policy of peace,unswervingly followed the path of peaceful development,actively promoted international cooperation,and demonstrated its image as a major country.By comparing the specific texts reported by The New York Times and China Daily,two major American and Chinese media on the Russia-Ukraine conflict,it can be concluded that the two media showed obvious political attitude and emotion.In conclusion,the study shows that readers should be aware of discourse criticism and develop critical thinking skills to take a more objective view and analysis of news reports.