A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Sino-US Trade Conflicts Reports

The case of"special protectionist tariffs on tires from China"is the first protective case in Obama Era, and also the biggest case directed against China. The thesis analyzes the four news reports chosen from China Daily and The New York Times respectively from the standpoint of critical discourse analysis.Critical Discourse Analysis mainly draws on the notions and methods associated with Systemic-functional Grammar developed by Halliday. It is a kind of analysis which seeks to discover the relationship among power, ideology and discourse.First, the theory of CDA is introduced, which includes the development and principles of CDA, the relationship among discourse, power and ideology, the application of CDA in news discourse and the studies of CDA at home.Then, the data analysis is carried out with the framework which adopts Fairclough's Three-dimensional Model of CDA as the basic theoretical framework and Halliday's theory of Metafunctions as the analytical tool. And it is conducted at three levels---text, discursive practice and social practice. At the level of text, the linguistic features are described through transitivity, especially the material process, verbal process and relational process. At the level of discursive practice, the thesis discusses the intertextuality of news discourse. At the level of social practice, the data is situated in social contexts to identify the interpretation made at the level of discursive and text practice.Finally, the findings of the research reveal that the four news reports in the two newspapers are basically objective, but the preference to their own countries can not be ignored either. The mass media serve for publics and national interests. Unbalanced power relations between China and US, cultures and histories of the two countries are also the factors that influence the news media reporting, especially the events related to the national interests. The thesis may help readers improve their awareness of criticism, read newspapers with a critical point of view and comprehend the relations between power and ideology behind news discourse.