A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Sports News On "2010 Football World Cup" In New York Times

Language, which is a means of communication, born with the birth of human society, develops side by side with the human society. So it is social. Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth CDA), which is proposed by Fowler et al in their book Language and Control in 1979, is a discourse analysis model based on social practice. This thesis will adapt three-dimensional method of discourse analysis(description, interpretation, and explanation) in CDA which was proposed by Fairclough as theoretical framework, while adapting the wording and the 6 processes in Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar (henceforth SFL) as analytical tool to analyze the collected material critically.This thesis analyzes 9 pieces of sports news reports about U.S.A football team, North Korea football team, and South Africa football team, which published in New York Times during the football world cup in South Africa in 2010, analyzing the data critically around the following two research questions:"1. How U.S.A., North Korea, and South Africa are represented linguistically differently in the FIFA World Cup by the New York Times? 2. What are the ideologies hidden in these sports news reports of the New York Times?",aiming to explore the hidden ideology in sports news reports and then reinforce the readers'critical literacy awareness. There are 2 major findings in this thesis: the New York Times contains its ideology in both wording and transitivity level; sports news report is also ideologically load, although unlike the heavily ideologically load political news report, economic news report and cultural news report.The significance and value of this thesis are mainly presented in three aspects: 1. It tends the research scope of CDA. Previously, the CDA researchers both in and out of China exert lots of interests in political news, economic news and cultural news without paying enough attention on sports news. 2. It extends the research scope of sports news reports. Previously, sports news report is always analyzed from statistics and kinematics perspective, while this thesis will analyze it from linguistic perspective. 3. The practical significance of this thesis is to introduce CDA to English teaching field, to promote English learners'critical awareness.