| Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) stems from critical linguistics, a new branch of linguistic analysis born in the late1970s. CDA researchers hold that discourse is the product of linguistic choices which carry ideological meanings, so they seek to unveil the hidden ideologies and the relationship between language and ideologies. More and more CDA researchers have showed great interest in the critical studies on media discourse, and news discourse has become an important research subject. The present study makes a detailed analysis of the news discourse from one Chinese newspaper and one American newspaper with the purpose of unveiling the hidden ideologies and their impact on people’s attitudes and cognition and finally providing inspiration for Chinese news media to enhance their influence.Based on Fairclough’s Three-dimensional Model (TDM), Halliday’s Systemic-functional Linguistics (SFL) and Lippmann’s Mass Communication Theory (MCT), the thesis carries out a critical analysis of the news reports from China Daily and The New York Times concerning the Renminbi appreciation issue and compares the results. Twenty news reports from the two newspapers are collected with the aim to identify the major differences in the discourse representation and reveal their respective embedded ideologies. The present thesis is conducted in three steps:description, interpretation and explanation. At the stage of description, the news data are studied from the aspects of lexical classification, transitivity and modality. At the stage of interpretation, news sources and modes of reporting of the news data, together with the influence of the pseudo-environment and stereotype on readers’cognition are investigated. As to the stage of explanation, the thesis investigates the institutional context, situational context and sociocultural context in which the news data with ideological meanings are produced.The results of the present study generally accord with those of former critical studies, but the present study finds that there are obvious differences in lexical choices, modality and news sources:a) the news data from the two newspapers tend to use different lexical choices to represent China’s Renminbi value and China’s attitude towards its currency appreciation; b) from the perspective of modality, the news data from The New York Times show more flexibility in the use of modal verbs of both high value and low value, which makes the tone of its news both tough and soft, while modal verbs of median value are preferred by the news data from China Daily; c) the news data tend to choose news sources that can best support their own opinions and stances. These differences illustrate that economic news discourse carries ideologies instead of providing absolutely objective and impartial facts.The significance of the present study is fourfold. Firstly, it further extends the research scope of CD A. Former CDA practitioners mainly focused on political news discourse, and there have been few attempts to uncover the hidden ideologies in economic news reports, especially the news reports concerning the Renminbi appreciation issue. Secondly, the comparative study of the news reports from different news agencies on the same event proves to be applicable and effective. By comparing the collected news reports from the two representative newspapers China Daily and The New York Times, different ideologies which lead to different representations of the Renminbi appreciation issue are uncovered. Thirdly, the study shows that readers should raise their critical awareness in news reading, in order not to be affected or misled by the ideologies hidden in the news discourse. Lastly, the thesis inspires Chinese news media to widely and vigorously promote China’s policies with sufficient justification of their rationality, and to make China’s strong and powerful voice heard on various occasions internationally. |
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