| Since 1960s, News has been researched in the linguistic orientations with stylistic study and critical linguistics approach. Since mid-1990s, a few similar studies have been conducted in China.This paper focuses on how linguistic structures in disaster news lead achieve news value and how news value is reflected through the linguistic structures. All the samples in this thesis are taken from the New York Times front-page news and the subject is restricted in the field of disaster news reports. As a case study, I have collected all the news leads about Hurricane Katrina and South Asia earthquake from New York Times' front pages with a time span of 15 days after the breakout of the very disaster.To explain news value, I adopt the news value list of Galtung and Ruge which was later summarized as proximity, prominence, consequence, timeliness and human interest. In the light of Halliday's functional approach, which summarizes three functions of language, namely, ideational function, interpersonal function, and textual function, I demonstrate the relationship between linguistic structures and news value in disaster news lead, and analyze three correspondent factors of context: field, tenor and mode. With the assistance of the functional grammar tools transitivity, mood and modality, thematical structure, I have analyzed the linguistic features of disaster news lead in New York Times and proved that linguistic structure constructs ideas or values in the news lead to fit into its social values. Thus I come to the conclusion: the forms of language encoded a socially constructed representation of the world and any aspect of linguistic structure can carry ideological significance.Finally the implications on the understanding of news in newspapers and on English teaching of news reading and writing in context are discussed in this thesis.
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