| The present study, mainly adopting the framework of 慶ritical discourse analysis?by Fowler and others, aims to analyse, at the angles of linguistics, sociology, mass media and psychology, several news reports from different newspapers, which represent the interests of different social positions, in order to reveal how ideology influences discourse and how discourse reacts to ideology, and to show how they both serve society.Critical linguistics goes back to 慣he Debate of Social Sciences in Germany?in 1960s. Adorno, Horkheimer, Habermas and other sociologists point out that the pure positivism overemphasizes the objective description of the facts, ignoring the functions of the thoughtful and emotional scientists in scientific research. Fowler and other critical linguists also carry on the essence of Saussurian 憀inguistic sign?and stress that any scientific research should be made in its social and historical context. They think that the major shortcomings of linguistic study are to isolate language from society, neglecting the historical and social background of events and processes. They criticize that modem linguistic study still attaches importance to the 憌hat?questions, overlooking the 憌hy?and 慼ow?questions. Thus the objective of critical linguistics is to answer those 憌hy抯 and 慼ow抯 by critical discourse analysis. The main objects of critical linguistics are public discourses from television, advertisements, newspapers, official documents, laws and institutions, etc. And its subjects are racial and sexual discriminations, education, law, employment, wars, nuclear weapons, political tactics, commercial behaviour and so on. Critical linguists attempt to unmask the unperceived relation between language and ideology, and to reveal how the power levels affect people抯 ideology with language in order to protect their own interestsviiand the present social structure.Critical linguists put forward their distinctive views of language:Language is a practitioner in social practice. It implies that language is not only a tool of communication, but also a part of social life, playing an incomparable role in social activities. Critical linguistics is a socially directed application of linguistic analysis, using chiefly concepts and methods associated with the 憇ystemic-functional?linguistics developed by Halliday. The conclusion of critical linguistic analysis is: there are three main language functions ?ideational, interpersonal and textual. In analyzing these functions should be linked with every language form, since these forms are socially and purposefully selected from the whole language system of the speaker, expressing its social and ideological meanings. So Fowler and others indicate that the ideological meanings of transitivity, modality, transformation, categorization, coherence and other forms should be carefully examined. Meanwhile we have found that 慺uzziness?and 憌ord frequency?also work ideologically, so we have also studied them in this approach.For this purpose we have selected about 25 news reports respectively from American, British and Chinese news agencies, and 9 of them are used as analytical text and others as reference. Actually they belong to 5 hotspots, so we divide them into five parts according to their contexts: categorization (Falun Gong Evil Cult); direct and indirect speeches (Palestinian Suicide Bomber); tenses and voices (Japanese Trawler Sank); fuzziness (Depleted Uranium); and frequency (Gandhi抯 Assassination). Then we carefully study their backgrounds, grammatically analyse all articles and examine them with the methods used by critical linguists to see if they could match Halliday抯 three language functions. At last we can clearly see how ideology functions in 憆eal?text.viii9The conclusion of this approach is:1.To a certain extent, this approach, from different angles, demonstrates that the previous researches of critical linguistics are effective and significant.2.In this... |
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