A Critical Discourse Analysis Of China-related News Reports On The Copenhagen Climate Change Summit In The U.S. Newspapers

This thesis takes Fairclough's three-dimensional model of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as theoretical framework and adopts transitivity and modality in Systemic-Functional Grammar (SFG) as the tools of discourse analysis. The author selected 10 China-related news reports on the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit from the websites of The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Christian Science Monitor and The Washington Times as analytic objects. This thesis aims to reveal ideologies and the operation of power hidden in the selected news reports through relating the selected news reports with social context and social structures and studies how the U.S. newspapers use discourse to construct China's environmental protection policies and actions, the divergence between China and the United States and the reason why the two countries hold different perspectives.China and the U.S. hold different opinions on each other's policy of carbon emissions reduction. The U.S. delegates expect China to make a binding carbon emissions reduction target, dissatisfy China's carbon intensity principles in reducing carbon emissions, and demand China to make its carbon emissions reduction under international monitoring and verifying and make a commitment to reduce more carbon emissions. The Chinese delegates hold that the developed countries and the developing countries should abide by the principles of"common but differentiated responsibilities"in reducing carbon emissions. China insists that its carbon emissions reduction is based on voluntary principle and demands the U.S. and other developed countries to adopt binding measures to reduce greenhouse gases emissions and provide financial and technical support to the developing countries.The research finds out that the divergence between China and the U.S. is closely related to economic security in this climate talks. And the reason of the divergence between the two countries in carbon emissions reduction lies in that both of them want to protect their development rights. They fear that the excessive reduction of carbon emissions may damage their economic development. Therefore, they cannot accept the criteria of carbon emissions reduction proposed by the other side. Although the U.S. newspapers declare that their reports are objective and impartial, the research result indicates that it is not true. The construction and choice of discourse of the China-related news reports in the U.S. newspapers are deeply influenced by the U.S. ideologies and serve for the U.S. authorities. The China-related news reports embody different characteristics in the selected U.S. newspapers. On the one hand, China's efforts and standpoints in carbon emissions reduction as well as the frictions and divergence between China and the U.S. are more objectively reported by the reporters. On the other hand, the U.S. ideological prejudice has great impacts on the China-related news reports. A lot of dissatisfied and distorted discourse still exists in the U.S. newspapers. China's image is negative in some news reports. Therefore, although the U.S. newspapers always declare that their reports are objective and impartial, it is a fact that these China-related news reports are filled with much ideological prejudice, which gives an implication for Chinese English education: it is very necessary to foster China's English learners'ability of critical literacy.