A Study Of American Political Editorials From The Perspective Of Critical Discourse Analysis

Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA for short),which was developed by Roger Fowler and Gunther Kress and so on in the late 1970s,is an approach for discourse analysis.It aims to uncover the ideology and power relations hidden in the mass media and to expose the counteraction of the discourses on the formation of people's ideology.So far,there has been a lot of research into the news reports on the political issues abroad and at home,however,the researches about editorials from the critical perspective are much less What's more,the researches of editorials abroad and at home mainly concentrate on their stylistics and linguistic features.Others focus on the study of editorials from the perspective of appraisal theory. Editorials are designed to state the opinions or viewpoints of the newspaper itself,and their topic can range from politics to economy to military affairs.And an editorial is often published by the authorities of news agencies,and it is,by no means,exempt from the official ideological manipulation.Therefore,the present thesis here aims to reveal the ideology of the ruling class or the dominant groups in the country behind the language which represents the interests of the powerful groups as well as to explore how the ideology counteracts to language by analyzing political editorials in American newspapers from the perspective of critical discourse analysis.Basing on the major analytical tools in Halliday's systemic-functional grammar together with Fairclough's CDA theory,that is,the three-dimensional model involving description, interpretation and explanation,the present paper attempts to construct a functional framework for the critical analysis of political editorials.And based on the selected 20 political editorials in the American newspapers,the thesis mainly makes a case study by employing Fairclough's three-dimensional model in terms of transitivity,modality and transformation as well as classification.And it aims to reveal the relationships of discourse,power and ideology in American newspapers by analyzing the linguistic features of the political editorials and their social contexts.This thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter one is a brief introduction of research background,general purposes and significances of the present study,methodology and data collection as well as the organization of the thesis.And the two research questions are also presented,that is,(1) What are the characteristics of the language features such as the process types,lexical choices and syntactic structures etc.in the political editorials in the influential American newspapers?(2) How do the language features of political editorials reflect the ideologies of the dominant groups in the influential American newspapers? Chapter two is a general literature review.A special effort is imparted to an overview of previous researches of CDA and editorials conducted by scholars at home and abroad.Furthermore,CDA's definition, philosophical and theoretical foundations as well as three major approaches are elaborated as well.The relationship of language,power and ideology is also discussed in this chapter.From the above discussion,the author claims that it is necessary and practical to make a critical analysis of the political editorials.Chapter three is the theoretical foundations for the thesis,and the three-dimensional model and the usually used analytical tools are discussed here.Combing the three-dimensional model with the analytical tools,the paper makes a qualitative and quantitative study of the selected samples in order to have an insight to the ideologies hidden behind political editorials in American newspapers in Chapter four.The last chapter is devoted to the major findings and significance of the present study.Then the limitations and further researches of the present study are also pointed out.Through the present study,by employing the appropriate verbal processes,modal auxiliaries, passive voices,it can convey the dominant group's power and ideological ideas in America political editorials.Therefore,the power and ideologies that reflect the American interests and values are covered up through the use of the verb processes,modal auxiliaries,voices.In actual, CDA can be regarded as the most effective instrument to reveal the relationships of language, power and ideology.As for the theoretical significance of the present study,it can prove that there are the hidden ideologies and powers in the America political editorials,and it can further verify the feasibility and manageability of Fairclough's three-dimensional model in the analysis of editorial discourse;meanwhile,it can also richen the research perspectives in the field of editorials;as for its practical significance,it can help the English learners to improve their critical awareness while reading the editorials in the newspapers,and it can be insightful for the teaching and learning of the editorials.