Analyzing Ideology Of English News Texts: Description And Interpretation From A Socio-functional Perspective

Media discourses are no longer thought to be objective and neutral, but subjective and ideological. News discourse, a typical genre of media discourses, has received particular scrutiny in the study of ideology in various disciplines. Among different approaches to ideological analysis of news discourse, CDA differs itself from others by accounting for ideology of news discourse on the assumption that "language is an irreducible part of social life" (Fairclough, 2003:2) and its use is viewed as a form of social practice. Equally but more importantly, CDA studies the relationships among language, power, and ideology on a discourse level. In the past few decades, CDA has developed a variety of approaches in western countries. Various approaches are different in emphasis on theory, methodology, and the type of research issues. However, what they do share as the major common feature is the combination of social theory with textual analysis. Among different approaches, socio-cultural change approach represented by Norman Fairclough's social theory of discourse has drawn a great deal of attention of researchers for his brand new concept of discourse, which is composed of three dimensions of text, discursive practice and social practice, and his three-dimensional framework of discourse analysis, which consists of three phases of description, interpretation and explanation.Fairclough's socio-cultural change approach is an effective approach to the analysis of ideology in news discourse and his social theory of discourse well explains the internal connection between language and society. His three-dimensional framework of discourse analysis has been frequently quoted and applied in news discourse analysis by the researchers both at home and abroad. However, for the application of his three-dimensional framework, there are also some comments on its limitations, which are summarized by the author of this paper as the following three aspects: (1) His model is too abstract and complicated; (2) The application of Systemic-Functional Linguistics in his framework is far from straightforward; (3) As for the study of language as a social practice, it lacks the integrated way of linking linguistic expressions to the production and reproduction of ideology.After a close look at the literature on CDA, the author has found that the root cause of the above weaknesses in Fairclough's three-dimensional framework is the lack of an insight into the nature of the relationship between ideology and its linguistic realizations. It is true that CDA is characterized by the combination of social theory with textual analysis and most researchers in CDA acknowledge that SFL is centrally important to the critical study of situated language events. To analyze ideology, Fairclough uses seven headings to constitute a framework for text analysis and discursive analysis. However, SFL components in Fairclough's framework are only taken as linguistic analytical tools for textual analysis to reach the goal to study social problems discursively. To overcome the insufficiency with Fairclough's framework, this paper is intended to explore the possibility of establishing a model of ideological discourse analysis from a socio-functional perspective to illustrate the link between ideology and its linguistic manifestations with the purposes to show the direct application of SFL in CDA work, to simplify the complexity of Fairclough's three stages of discourse analysis and to analyze the ideology of trade protectionism in English news texts by linking linguistic expressions to the production and reproduction of ideology.A socio-functional perspective in this study means the theory of SFL is not only employed as an analytical tool for text analysis, but also as the theoretical foundation, on which the internal relationship between ideology and its linguistic manifestations is explained. Language in SFL is taken as systems of "meaning potential" or as sets of resources which influence what the speaker can do with language in a particular social context. The meaning potential in linguistic system is generalized into metafunctions around three motifs, namely, the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual. As the most well-known social semiotic approach to language, SFL uses the notion of three metafunctions of language to bridge language and society in grammar. According to Halliday, any clause reflects the three metafunctions of language simultaneously and there is no exception to the linguistic forms that encode ideological functions. That is, ideology, as a form of social phenomenon, must be part of linguistic phenomena and the ideological function, as one form of social functions of language, must be included in the three metafunctions of language and realized in the three systems of Transitivity, Mood, and Theme-Rheme.Given the fact that description and interpretation are both the goal of and the approach to the study of language in modern linguistics, analyzing ideology of trade protectionism in English news reports on the recalls of toys by Mattel, the biggest American toy company, will be carried out with the two stages of socio-functional description and socio-functional interpretation. Socio-functional description means to describe the linguistic features that may carry ideological intentions in texts in the three systems of Transitivity, Mood and Theme-Rheme. Socio-functional interpretation refers to interpret how ideology plays its function with the described linguistic features to show the dialectical relationship between ideology and discourse from the three perspectives of ideational, interpersonal and textual metafunctions. As for the weakness of linguistic theory of SFL in explaining the dialectical relationship between ideology and discourse, Fairclough's social theory of discourse will be employed in the second stage of socio-functional interpretation as well. This combination of Halliday's SFL and Fairclough's social theory of discourse in the new model of ideological discourse analysis will demonstrate the direct application of SFL in CDA work through the interpretation of ideological processes that mediate relations of power and control by bringing linguistic expressions into the processes of text production and reproduction.In order to achieve the goal of this paper, firstly, the detailed information on CDA, especially on Fairclough's social-cultural change approach is reviewed with the focus on his three-dimensional framework of discourse analysis. Based on Fairlcough's theoretical account of the connections between language, power and ideology and the author's understanding of the internal relationships between language and society and between discourse and ideology, Fairclough's model of three-dimensional conception of discourse is modified to show the dialectical relationships among the three dimensions of discourse and between discourse and ideology. Secondly, SFL is introduced to explain why ideology in English news texts is analyzed from a socio-functional perspective and how the connection between ideology and its linguistic realizations is bridged by the three metafunctions of language. Thirdly, a socio-functional model of ideological discourse analysis is set up on the theoretical basis of Halliday's SFL in combination with Fairclough's social theory of discourse to show the main common feature of CDA --- the combination of social theory with textual analysis. Fourthly and finally, the ideological analysis of American trade protectionism in English news texts is conducted under the new model of ideological discourse analysis proposed in this dissertation with the two stages of socio-functional description and socio-functional interpretation to prove its validity and feasibility.Academically, the contribution of this study is the set-up of a socio-functional model of ideological discourse analysis, which not only presents a tentative and alternative attempt to simplify Fairclough's three stages of analysis, to apply SFL in CDA work directly and to integrate the way of putting linguistic expression in the processes of production and reproduction of ideology, but also provides a new approach to unlock ideologies encoded in English news discourse with two stages of socio-functional description and interpretation that can keep the analysis relatively simply and textual. Practically, this study will improve readers' critical reading ability and form a habit of reading newspapers with critical reading consciousness. "Journalism has social effects: through its power to shape issue agendas and public discourse, it can reinforce beliefs; it can shape people's opinions not only of the world but also of their place and role in the world" (Richardson, 2007:13). English, as a truly international language, has become more and more important and salient in non-English-speaking countries in the 21^st century of globalization. Like any other news reports, English news reports are spreading information in various forms to every comer in the world and ideologies embedded in them are influencing and will continue to influence their readers. For these reasons, and many more, analyzing ideology of English news texts needs to be taken very seriously.