A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Reports On Chinese Economy In American Newspapers

Based on the critical discourse analysis and systemic functional grammar, this thesis gives a critical analysis of reports on Chinese economy in American newspapers, combining the features of news discourse and the social background of news events. The aim is to expose the hidden ideology and power behind those economic reports so that the relation between language and ideology can be known better.The publication of language and Control (R. Fowler, G. Kress, Trew: 1979) is a sign of the beginning of critical discourse analysis, which has been a key term for the linguists and socialists, etc. Language is actually a tool for people to connect and communicate with each other. However, just like people, we are persons in society, and language we speak bears the feature of society. Only by putting the discourses and utterances in the society, can we know and understand each other better. Only by analyzing the language everyone is using, can we go on with our communication without any misunderstanding. News discourse, as a kind of public discourse, is a reflection of society and culture. People know about the outside world by listening to news reports and reading newspapers. Our world is filled with news discourses. Most of the news reports are required to have the features of objectivity, justness and impartiality, and the reporters are not allowed to input their own attitude and ideology in the reports. However, some news agents are the representations of their government and they must carter to it and speak for it. In this case, some of the reports, especially some political ones concerning about the national events, will be accompanied with a certain inclination. To some ordinary readers, they believe the economic news is justice, objective and fair, since there are figures, tables in the reports to show the reliability. However, it is not always the case. There is always reporters'attitude and ideology hidden in the reports. If the ordinary readers do not have a critical awareness, sometimes the hidden ideology can not be shown and grasped easily. Here, the critical awareness or critical literacy is a word used in Appraisal Research: An Intersubjective Model of Critical Intercultural literacy (Tang, 2006). It indicates that the readers should not just content themselves to know the general idea of what they are reading. More importantly, they should have the awareness to explore a deeper and implied meaning, that is, what the author or reporter's real intention is. Therefore, it is necessary and significant for us to study language and have a critical analysis of the discourses. The promotion of readers'critical awareness is the very purpose and implication of this thesis.Generally speaking, CDA is a multidisciplinary discourse-analytical practice which, assuming a critical stance, explores the relation between discourse and social inequality. CDA aims to reveal the ideology behind the seemingly objective language. Systemic functional grammar focuses on the functional roles of language, explaining how the language is used and what the metafunctions of language are. Halliday (2000) holds that language reflects the culture of one nation and by language, all the cultures will reflect the three metafunctions: ideational, interpersonal and textual function. Nowadays, the three metafunctions have been very important analytical tools to critical discourse analysis. Both SFG and CDA emphasize to see language in society and the close connection between SFG and CDA will be presented in the following part.Furthermore, most of the former studies focus on critical analysis of political discourses, and there are relatively fewer ones on economic discourses. Therefore, under the circumstances, this thesis tries to collect those economic reports from the main American newspapers and gives a detailed analysis so that the hidden ideology and power can be revealed and explored. By doing so, the author aims to make sure that there are ideologies and attitudes hidden in the seemingly objective and impartial language so as to show the importance and significance of the present study. And then the thesis will achieve its original intention to promote the readers'critical sensibility and awareness when they read news reports so as to strengthen the anti-control awareness of public discourses. Meantime, to some extent, this is also beneficial to the business teaching.