A Contrastive Analysis Of News Reports On Diaoyu Islands Disputes Based On Fairclough’s Three-dimensional Model

In September,2012, Japan claimed to purchase Diaoyu islands from an individual and caused disputes between China and Japan even a reginal tension in Asia. Both China Daily and Washington Post represented the issue from different perspectives and declared their own opinions on the disputes.China Daily is China’s national English newspaper and the most frequently reprinted newspaper abroad and it represented the issue in details with a series of reports. Washington Post is the biggest news agency with the longest history in Washington D. C., and also the newspaper that reported the issue most in the United States of America. To some degree, the news reports in the two newspapers can be regarded as their own stances and opinions of the two countries, namely, China and the USA.Fairclough’s three-dimensional model provides a systematic theoretical foundation of news discourse analysis from the perspective of critical discourse analysis because of its dialectical linguistic philosophy. After showing its appearance in China, such a theory has been developing rapidly. However, the most studies of such a theory are introductory and its practical study needs to be further deepened.This thesis tries to conduct a contrastive analysis of the news reports of the two newspapers with three reports from each as its analytic subject based on Fairclough’s three-dimensional model in three stages:textual stage, interpretive stage and the explanatory stage.In the textual stage, the thesis analyzed the linguistic features of the news reports in the two newspapers from the perspectives of lexical choice and classification, transitivity and modality based on Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar. In the interpretive stage, the thesis analyzed the reliability of the news reports in the two newspapers from the perspective of news source and reporting modes. And in the explanatory stage, the thesis explains the news reports from the perspectives of institutional context and the social context and reveals the power and ideology embedded in the news reports, and arrives to the conclusion that China Daily is objective while Washington Post is not.Influenced by the its ideology, Washington Post is the medium serving the USA’s national interest and transmitting its ideology. Washington Post adopts a one-sided language to transmit its ideology and values, in the purpose of depicting a negative picture of China to its readers and supporting Japan at the same time. On the contrary, China Daily justifies that Diaoyu islands are its inherent territory in a neutral language. Therefore, readers are advised to keep language awareness to dig out the real truth behind the language, and form a correct conclusion.