Critical Reading Of English Newspapers From The Perspective Of Intersubjectivity

The present research attempts to explore how positioning and interpositioning is negotiated between writing subjects and reading subjects during intercultural reading encounter by constructing an intersubjective model of Critical Reading and by drawing an APPRAISAL theory. The data for the research include 5 media texts taken from The New York Times and CNN netnews. The thesis aims to emphasize the necessity of improving the critical awareness and critical ability of Chinese English learners.Critical Reading, an emerging method of discourse reading, is the pedagogical application of Critical Discourse Analysis which is based on SFL. It aims at helping English reading subjects acquire information actively, instead of passively and revealing the ideology embedded behind the news texts.This thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter One introduces the aims, rationales and methodology of the research. Chapter Two mainly reviews previous studies on critical discourse analysis of news texts at home and abroad. Chapter Three introduces the theoretical foundation. The present research is based on Fairclough's three-dimensional model and integrated into the perspective of intersubjectivity. The thesis conducts its analysis on American mainstream news media by using APPRAISAL theory. Chapter Four, from the perspective of the writing subjects, demonstrates how the writing subjects position the reading subjects and achieve the interpersonal control on potential readers by using analytical tools of APPRAISAL. Chapter Five, from the perspective of reading subjects, especially Chinese English learners, demonstrates how Chinese English learners conduct critical reading from the perspective of intersubjectivity during the intercultural reading encounter. In Chapter Six, the author summarizes the implications and limitations of this study and gives suggestions for further study. It is obtained after research that although news discourse are claimed to be neutral, there are still ideologies hidden in the language. Only when the reading subjects acquire critical reading awareness and abilities, can they achieve during intercultural encounter. The significance of the present study is that it attempts to provide a critical reading model for teachers and students of Chinese English Newspapers Reading and help them promote the critical awareness on news discourses.