| Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as a branch of discourse analysis goes beyond the description of discourse to an explanation of how and why particular discourses are produced. CDA deals with examining and analyzing spoken and written texts to reveal the discursive sources of power, dominance, and inequality, and explaining how these sources are produced within specific social, economic, political, and historical contexts. News discourse as a type of non-literary mass media discourse attracts attention from many critical linguists. The relationship between language and ideology is also one of the central topics for critical discourse analysis, particular in the study of media discourse. Critical linguists believe that there is a determinant relation between ideological processes and linguistic processes and that the linguistic choices made in discourses can carry ideological meaning.Based on Fairclough's three-dimensional model and Halliday's systemic-functional grammar, the present thesis conducts a comparative critical analysis of news reports from different sources on the same event in order to identify diverse ideologies hidden in news discourse. Samples for analysis are ten English news reports concerning the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference extracted from China Daily and The New York Times respectively. The present analysis is carried out at three levels. At the textual level, aspects of lexical classification and transitivity are explored. Mode of discourse representation and news sources are examined at the discursive level. Analysis at the third level focuses on investigating the textual choices in the light of social and cultural context in which texts are produced.The objective of this research is to make a contribution to the application of CDA. Our study validates the results of many former critical studies that news is not impartial, serious and objective as it seems to be and that the naturalized ideological assumptions and implications are concealed under the seemingly neutral lexical and structural patterns.The significance of this research is threefold. First is the extension of research scope of CD A. Previously, CD A is interested in analyzing such news discourse as politics, racism, and gender discrimination. But little attention is paid to climate change reports in this field. Second, the comparative study of the news reports from different news agencies on the same event is proved to be applicable and effective. Last, it may help raise people's critical language awareness in news reading.The present thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One is a brief introduction to the research background, goal, significance and organization of the thesis. In Chapter Two, the fundamental concepts and development of CDA and news discourse are introduced, followed by the presentation of contributions made by prominent figures in critical discourse studies. The theoretical framework and methodology of the present study are elaborated in Chapter Three. An analytical model is proposed and the methods employed for data collection and data analysis are also introduced in detail. In Chapter Four, news data are dealt with first from headline/lead, the most prominent and significant elements of news texts. Then, two groups of samples are analyzed at three levels:textual level, discursive level and socio-cultural level. Differences between these two newspapers are identified and a reasonable explanation of differences is also presented. Chapter Five summarizes major findings of this study, followed by the implications derived from the research findings and the limitations and suggestions for further research.
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