Critical Discourse Analysis On Speech Reporting In News Discourse

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a very important approach in discourse analysis.The typical feature differentiating CDA from other traditional ways of discourse analysis isthat it links the analyzing process with social powers and ideologies aiming at the revealingof hidden ideologies and social power through discourse analysis. A great many scholarshave made their contribution to this field and broadened the research scope of CDA,among which CDA on news discourse is a most noticeable one. Newspaper is an importantaspect of mass media and serves as a window through which people get information andknow the outside world with granted truthfulness and credibility. However, criticaldiscourse analysts found out that newspapers are by no means objective; instead, they areof ideological significance. This thesis as a case study on news discourse from perspectiveof CDA, aims to explore and compare the ideology held by China Daily and The New YorkTimes in reporting Cheonan Event by analyzing speech reporting. All the speech reportingused in this thesis is collected from news reports which were on Cheonan event andpublished during the period of May18,2010to May25,2010. Studies on speech reportingis conducted in four aspects, namely, mode of speech, news source of speech, reportingverbs of speech and content of speech. Appraisal theory as an analytic technique is adoptedin the attitudinal analysis on speech reporting in order to reveal the investment of thereporter’s stance and ideology.Based on the study, the findings are briefly summarized as follows. First, reporters ofthe two newspapers have delivered their stance to the indirect speech either by directlyinserting its stance into the indirect speech or influencing the intrinsic attitudinal evaluationby adding perspective of evaluation or change the degree of evaluation. Second, ChinaDaily focuses on the news source of the event-involved parties and lays comparativelyequal emphasis on the news source of North Korea and South Korea. Whereas The NewYork Times attaches more importance to the news source of event-uninvolved parties andthe news source of South Korea. Third, in China Daily, most positive verbs are used tointroduce the speeches from North Korea; yet, in The New York Times most positive verbsare used to introduce the speeches from South Korea. Last, China Daily stresses the twosides’ opposite belief concerning the North’s involvement and The New York Times theantagonistic relationship between the two. As a whole, it could be generally concluded that in reporting Cheonan Event, The New York Times takes side with South Korea in the eventwhile China Daily comparatively keeps impartial attitude toward the two countries withslight inclination to the North.