On Critical Linguistics And The Anglo-American Newspaper Discourse Study

The basic purpose of the present work is to argue and demonstrae thevalue to criticism of an analytic method drawn from linguistics; theseclaims stem from the belief by the British linguist Roger Fowler that"analysis based on the confident use of proper linguistic terms is betterequipped for this task than an amateur commentary using onlyquasi-grammatical terms." Accordingly, this work mainly concentrates onthe theory of critical language study by Fowler and other critical linguists,aiming to expose the influence of ideology to text and the counteractive oftext to ideology through the superficial form of language from the angle oflinguistics, sociology, and psychology, and to reveal how language and textoriginates from social structure and power relationship and in return servethem.In illustrating the above-mentioned idea, this work falls into severalparts:Section I discusses critical linguistics in terms of its concerns anddevelopment. Under the influence of the "theory of critical sociology"advocated by the western Marxism of the Frankford School, criticallinguistics holds that language as the industrial media of ideology intelevision, newspapers and so on also serves in defemse of ideology;- VII -therefOre, a critical study frOm the angle of lingUistic analysis can beconducted. SinGe the British lingUists Roger Fowler and Gunther Kress firstinitiated this concept in l979, it has obtained a history of over 20 years, itsUnPact on soclal linguistics and discourse analysis has become more andmore strongly felt in linguistic circle.Section II gives a brief overview to the theoretical foundaions ofcritical linguistics. Taking the modem critical theory ill literatUr as itsbaCkgrund, critical lingUistics on the one hand manages to adopt some'concemed theOries in literatUre and makes them available. In Which thetheOry of defamiliedzation in the Russian formalism, dialogism by Bthetin,point of view by Uspensky and GenettC, as well as the Frenchpoststructuralism have all been popular in literare stUdy and can be aPpliedu uin literary critical analysis. In linguistics, on the other hand, criticallingUistics mainly absorbs the hypothesis of the relationship betWeenlanguage and thought by the American anthropologist Edward SaPir andBenjamin Lee Whorf as well as Halliday's systematic-funtional grammarFollowing these, section II continues to exPlore some linguistic conceptsinvolved in critical linguistics such as langUage, text and discourse, andcontext etc, but focusing on the discussion of the central idea of ideology,and its re1ationship with language.- VlII -Section III locates the core of this work, which is also the theoreticalstress tbr critical linguistics to obtain its feasibility of development at thepresent time. As a branch of insthemental lingUistics, the analy'ticmethodology of critical lingUistics refers extensively to the mostrePresentatlve IingUistic theory of the modem time, especially thesystematic-functional grammar represented by Halliday Based on the threemetafunctions of langUage raised by Halliday critical lingUistics carries onan exPloration at a meaningful level, but the stUdy of the prOblem of .transformation in ''universal graInInar' by Chomsky also offerS critidallingUistics inspiraions in a larg sense.Section IV contriutes to the part of case analysis. Thrugh mpica1illustrations of some real texts in the westem news media (i.e. neWSPaPer),o uthis work thus Mer proves the necessity in processing a critical study oflangUage, as well as the value and the realistic significance for theexlstence of critical linguistics.The last section ends the work with such a conclusion; ideology existSin all kinds of texts including literary works, it is concealed behind thelanguage smicture of text, exerting its influence in a subt1e way Beingaccustomed to it, or actuaIly covered by it, people usualIy turn a deaf ear tolt, spreading even inte...