| In accordance with Fairclough's three-dimensional model and Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar, this thesis conducts a comparative study of newspaper coverage concerning the 60th anniversary of China's National Day from Chinese and American mainstream media in the hope of finding out the reasons for the disparities in reporting the same event by news media. The present study collects 20 samples from New York Times and 28 samples from People's Daily, all of which are concerned with this topic. It then examines these samples at three levels:text, discourse practice and social practice。Chapter One introduces the background and the aim of this thesis. Chapter Two reviews the previous literature on news studies in general, news studies with critical approach and critical news studies on the same event. Chapter Three focuses on the theoretical framework and analytic tools of the present study. Specifically, Fairclough's three-dimensional model serves as the theoretical framework and Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar is the main tool for the analysis. Chapter Four carries out a comparative study at the levels of text and discourse. To be specific, transitivity and classification are employed to investigate the linguistic features at the textual level, while intertextuality is introduced to explore the different news sources and modes of quotation. Chapter Five is a discussion at the level of social practice in which explanations have been given to discuss the reasons for the disparities in reporting the same event in terms of politics, economy and culture. The last chapter is a short conclusion.It is found that news discourse is not a faithful reflection of the reality, but is restricted by a variety of social factors. The marked disparities of Chinese and American newspaper coverage concerning China's 60th anniversary celebrations at the level of text and discourse practice derive from the political, economical and cultural differences between the two countries. |
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