A Corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis Of Chinese And American Media Reports On Smog In China

Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA)is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of written and oral texts,emphasizing not only the dissection of the textual characteristics of a discourse,but also an in-depth study of the social context in which the specific discourse is produced.It regards language as a social practice,aiming at revealing the relationship between discourse,power,and ideology.As a media discourse,news reporting is not completely unbiased as the language behind it also contains the standpoints of its generators.This study analyzes the news reports of China and the United States in an attempt to expose the ideological and power relations hidden behind the news.Based on a critical discourse analysis of 190 news reports on China’s smog in The New York Times and China Daily,this study explores how ideology spreads through language choice.This study adopts Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework as the basic theoretical framework,and combines it with Michael Halliday’s systemic functional grammar.Through the combination of qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis,text,intertextuality and social analysis are carried out in the description,interpretation and explanation stages.This study aims to answer the three questions:(1)What are the similarities and differences of lexical and grammatical features in Chinese and American reports on Smog in China?(2)What are the similarities and differences of intertextuality in Chinese and American news reports on Smog in China?(3)What are the potential reasons for the differences in language strategies between Chinese and American media reports? The main findings of this study are as follows:In description stage,the linguistic characteristics of news are identified through the analysis of lexical choice,transitivity and modality.The lexical preference,transitivity and the different use of modal verbs in Chinese and American media illustrate the similarities and differences in the focus of news reporting between the two countries,and there are significant differences between their linguistic features and hidden ideology.In interpretation stage,this study explains the generation process of news from the source of news and the modes of reporting based on the concept of intertextuality.In contrast to China Daily,where most of the paraphrased discourse comes from specific news,The New York Times is more personally intervening in its paraphrasing,tending to construct a negative image of China in order to implant an ideology in line with its own national interests.In explanation stage,the linguistic differences between the two newspapers are explained from two perspectives: the social institutional context and the socio-cultural context.The different social contexts in China and the United States influence and determine the differences in media coverage between the two countries.Research has found that the two newspapers communicate their respective ideologies through different languages.China Daily presents the world with an image of actively fighting the smog,while The New York Times spreads negative information and discredits China.It is hoped that the findings of this paper will provide a theoretical reference for the critical analysis of news discourse and help readers to objectively view the hidden intentions and motives behind news events.