Discourse Analysis From Critical Perspective

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) seeks to reveal the relationship between language and its social conditions, particularly the relationship between language and ideology by analyzing language phenomena. In this thesis, a critical discourse analysis of six news reports on July 5th riots in Xinjiang from The New York Times is conducted in an attempt to explore the hidden relationship between language and ideology and to represent how the language producers use language to convey their ideology and viewpoints.Adopting Fairclough's three-dimensional model of CDA as the basic theoretical framework and Halliday's theory of metafunctions as the analytical tool, the data analysis is conducted at three levels: textual practice, discursive practice and social practice. At the level of text practice, lexical choice, transitivity and transformation are analyzed. At the level of discursive practice, speech sources and reporting modes are analyzed to explain discourse production. At the level of social practice, news discourse is situated in broader social, historical and cultural background to explain the ideology-driven choices at the level of textual analysis and discursive practice.Through the analysis,it can be found that what textual strategies to employ in the news reports is determined by the underlying socio-ideological contexts, and in turn, the news texts contribute to the maintenance and reproduction of the underlying socio-ideologies.For the present study, it is illustrated that CDA can provide a method for revealing the hidden ideology embedded in the news discourse. Besides, in practice CDA can be introduced to teaching and reading so that students'critical awareness and sensitivity will be raised while reading English texts. In this way, students can make their own judgments.