A Critical Discourse Analysis Of News Reports On 2010 Shanghai World Expo In China Daily And The New York Times

This thesis conducts a study on different media accounts on the same event from the perspective of critical discourse analysis (CDA). By analyzing reports about 2010 Shanghai World Expo from China Daily and The New York Times, linguistic differences are discussed, and the hidden ideology behind the news texts is revealed.Adopting Fairclough's three-dimensional model as its theoretical framework, this thesis applies lexical classification and transitivity in Halliday's systemic-functional grammar as analytical tools and carries out an analysis on ten news texts on 2010 Shanghai World Expo in China Daily and The New York Times. The analysis is conducted from three levels: text, discursive practice and social practice. On text level, the language features are examined from the perspective of lexical classification and transitivity. On the level of discursive practice, the source and selection of news is discussed. On the level of social practice, the news texts are placed in the social and cultural context to provide an explanation for the former two levels. In this thesis concretely, the reason why China Daily and The New York Times reports the same event differently is informed. That is, both the two media are subject to its own social cultural and ideological background to serve the American and Chinese governments respectively.