Discourse, Power And Ideology

Critical linguistics is a newly developed branch of linguistics studies. It aims to study the relationships between language, ideology and power. It argues that both the ideological loading of particular ways of using certain linguistic forms systematically and the relations of power which underlie them are often unclear to people. Critical Discourse Analysis, initiated by critical linguistics, offers critical readings of newspapers, political propaganda, official documents, regulations, formal genres such as the interview, and so on, to show how social groups are presented in discourse and how ideological discourse is constructed socio-politically as a means to confirm group dominance.Critical discourse analysis (CDA) has a history of 30 years. Its main theoretical origin is Western Marxism, and its aim is to uncover power relationships. CDA often uses the method of systemic-functional analysis, intertextual analysis and historical analysis, which are complementary and can complement traditional methods of social and cultural analysis. CDA is social action and has contributed to social and cultural progress. The thesis attempts to discuss the concept, principles and theoretical framework of critical discourse analysis and its application in practice.The thesis first surveys the theories supporting the discussion in the thesis, including the theory of CDA, its history, principles and development in both China and abroad. The role of language in politics, economics and culture as well as the complex relationships between language, power and ideology has aroused attention in western counties long ago. With the publication of Fowler's et al. Language and Power, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) developed quickly. CDA aims at making transparent the connections between language, power and ideology in natural speech situations from the angle of linguistics, sociology and psychology, and also studies how these factors influence each other.After the introduction of the theory of CDA-its history, principles anddevelopment in both China and abroad, the thesis moves to media discourse theories. English, as a universal language, has influential position in the process of development of science, economics and intercultural communication. Propaganda, which is dominated by English news, is influencing even controlling people's ideology. Media discourse has received particular scrutiny in the study of critical discourse analysis (CDA). The second part introduce the relationships between media discourse study and critical discourse analysis and choose news report-one of the representative genre in media discourse as the object for detailed analysis.The third part illustrates the theoretical framework of critical discourse analysis. The thesis mainly adopts Fairclough's model and Halliday's systemic-functional linguistics as the tools for the analysis. In Fairclough's approach, there are three analytical focuses in analyzing any communicative event; they are text, discourse practice and sociocultural practice. And then introduces Halliday's systemic-functional theory which is the analytical tool of the thesis. Halliday holds that language has three metafunctions, which is ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function, and mainly introduces transitivity, passive voice, nominalization and lexical structure in the first one; modality in the second and discourse representation in the last one.After the introduction of the theories and method, the thesis studies four groups of news reports in media discourse in the perspective of critical discourse analysis (CDA), trying to discuss the concept, principles and theoretical framework of critical discourse analysis. Emphasis is put on the relations between language, power and ideology.Based on the above studies, the author makes a conclusion that it is urgent and significant of introducing critical linguistics into our country's language education, instructing ESL learners in critical discourse analysis, and developing critical awareness in langu...