A Critical Analysis Of News Discourse

Critical linguistics is a discourse analysis model based on social practice. This thesis, firstly adopting the theoretical framework proposed by Fairclough and taking Hallidayan transitivity theory as the analytical tool, tentatively puts forwards a functional framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth CDA), viz. to construe a functional framework based on Hallidayan transitivity theory and integrating Fairclough's three-dimensional method of discourse analysis (description, interpretation, explanation) to analyze news discourse critically.By virtue of focusing on the data with clause as the analytical level, the thesis analyzes news discourse of September 11^th attack in detail to uncover how ideology controls discourse and contrarily how discourse counter-controls ideology and how the two interact to serve society.This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 presents the background knowledge of the present study, the objectives to achieve, the research methodology adopted, the data collection and research questions. Chapter 2 traces the history of CDA, a special concern is laid on the theory of power, ideology and transitivity as an analytical tool of CDA, and proposes a functional framework of CDA. Chapter 3 illustrates the definition of news and the categories of news based on the criterion of content. Chapter 4 applies the construed functional framework of CDA to carry on a qualitative and quantitative study centering upon data samples from American press and Chinese newspapers to reveal the subdiscoursal ideologies and to tell the different way the three genres manifest ideologies respectively . Chapter 5 draws a conclusion, figures out significance of the research and points out limitation of the present study and some areas for further study.The significance of this research is presented in three spheres. One is the extension of research scope of CDA. Previously CDA exerts too much interest in analyzing such news discourse as politics and culture without paying enough attention to economic ones which are actually capable of carrying ideology. The other is the construing of the functional framework of CDA, namely, proposing a functional framework based on Hallidayan transitivity theory and integrating Fairclough's three-dimensional method of discourse analysis (description, interpretation, explanation) to analyze news discourse critically. The last is the tentative exploration of the relationship between Systemic Functional Linguistic(henceforth SFL) and CDA, which is a research gap at present.