| Discourse analysis has been applied to various types of discourses for decades. Most of this research is conducted with the mainstream of discourse analysis - non-critical approaches. However, in the past twenty to thirty years, a new approach appeared known as critical discourse analysis (CDA) by linguists. Presently, this form of analysis itself is continuing to evolve and improve.Since news, as a type of public mass media discourse, is of interest to CDA, it has been chosen as the analyzing data in this paper by adopting the critical approach of discourse analysis. The principle for choosing the data in CDA is that the two selected news pieces must be on similar subject matter from different reporting sources (e.g. the western world and the oriental world). Following this principle and the classification of five types of news in regards of content, five pairs of news samples about September 11th attack on America in this thesis have been selected from American and Chinese newspapers and journals respectively.In earlier CDA works, transitivity in SFG was believed to be an efficient instrument for investigating ideologies hidden in news reporting. But the transitivity analyses of those works were confined to the comparison between the headlines and single clauses of the two pieces of selected news. The transitivity analysis, of these previous works, of news texts seems to be not fleshed out, therefore needing to be expanded upon. Intending to further explore the transitivity analysis in news texts, this paper tries to prove that the quantitative study of transitivity can be applied into the selected news samples in order to fulfill CDA's objectivity. In aword, my aim is to utilize the quantitative transitivity analysis of news to dig out the oblique ideology concealed in news texts.Throughout the quantitative transitivity analysis and discussions of five pairs of news about September 11th attack which are selected from American and Chinese media, ideologies of two nations are exposed. The USA strongly presents a miserable and shocking picture during and in the wake of the attack to stir up the American's emotional response about their severe losses and great insults in the attack (e.g. in the material processes of political news, 48.3% attack-related Actors in the American news over 2.9% such Actors in the Chinese news). It subconsciously evokes reader's hatred towards suspected terrorist enemies and naturally leads them to maintain the US administration's decision against those nations who may be harboring those terrorists. In the selected pieces, the US seems to create the provocative subtext which urges its people to feel that superpower can not tolerate this great insult. The aggressive-reactive feature of the American government is shown by the quantitative transitivity analysis of the news. On the other hand, the study displays in one part, the more moderate character of the Chinese government when it encounters a crisis; and in another part shows the Chinese government's dissatisfaction with American leading superiority over other countries in the world (e.g. 6.7% global concerned Actors in the Chinese economic news to 40% such Actors in the corresponding American piece) and also its indifference to the US because of their disagreements. The analysis and discussion section of the paper tentatively verifies the assumption that transitivity can be a quantitative analytical tool of CDA in news.It is suggested that the complementary findings for earlier CDA achievements can be revealing to English learners, and teachers as well as researchers for the sake of news reading and teaching. By this means, theycan raise the awareness of perceiving unconscious ideologies in news and be guided to have a deeper cognition towards news and penetrate the language itself.
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