| Critical Discourse Analysis, started from 1970s, is proposed by Fowler etc. in their book Language and Control published in 1979. Critical Discourse Analysis is a modal of discourse analysis based on Systemic Functional Grammar. It intends to discuss the hidden ideology or power relationship in discourse, trying to reveal the influence of ideology on discourse. In real life, ideology commonly exists and gradually becomes naturalized as non-ideological assumptions so that people get to be accustomed to it. Critical Discourse Analysis aims to make these non-ideological assumptions explicit in order to reveal the relationship between ideology and discourse. The main research area of Critical Discourse Analysis lies in the public discourse, including television, advertisements, newspapers, political propaganda, official documents, legal documents etc. Its topics contain gender and race discrimination, pedagogy, equality on employment and law, war, political strategies, commercial conducts and so on. Through the analysis of the above factors in discourses, Critical Discourse Analysis not only reveals the relationship between language and ideology which can not be easily perceived by people but also reveals how the power classes use language to influence people's thoughts and how they use language to protect their interests and the existing social structures.News discourse as a major kind of public discourse is one of the most important ways for people to know the world. It influences nearly every aspect of our life. But news reports are never absolutely objective; they are influenced by all kinds of social and cultural elements and even the reporter's personal ideas. They may seem to be objective, yet actually they embody all kinds of hidden ideology, influencing the reader's ideology gradually and unconsciously.The present thesis takes two news reports on the Shenzhou-7 mission as data and the two reports are taken respectively from New York Times and People's Daily. Through the analysis of these two discourses by using the analytic tools including classification, transitivity, nominalization, passivisation, modal auxiliary verbs, speech reporting, thematic choice derived from Systemic Functional Grammar, the thesis aims to reveal the hidden ideology in the discourse and attempts to improve the reader's critical linguistic awareness.Chapter One is a brief introduction to the concept of news, the background, the significance and the organization of the thesis. Chapter Two is a general survey of Critical Discourse Analysis. In this part the author introduces a key term "ideology" in Critical Discourse Analysis, and the aim, research areas, principles of Critical Discourse Analysis as well as the research done both at home and abroad. Chapter Three introduces the basic theories and the analytic methods the author will apply in the research. They are mainly derived from Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar. Chapter Four is a comparative analysis of two news reports on the Shenzhou-7 mission selected respectively from New York Times of America and People's Daily of China using the theories and analytic methods introduced in Chapter three. Chapter Five is a summary of major findings, the limitations of the thesis and the implications for further study.
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