Critical Discourse Analysis Of American Economic Review Post Financial Crisis In2008

Critical discourse analysis studies social interactions that expose their hidden determinantsin the system of social relations and hidden effects they may have on that system. As a type ofmass media discourses, the news discourse is always analyzed by the critical linguists. Itincludes economic news, political news, and so on so forth. News review, a type of newsdiscourses, gives a specialized analysis of the current social affairs in order to declare theviewpoints of the mass media. Being a sub-branch of news review, economic review analyzesthe economic affairs and holds its own attitudes by using economic knowledge and theories.However, most of previous studies are more or less concerned with news reports; the economicreview arouses little attentions from scholars. In order to fill the blank, the present researchfocuses on economic review to explore the underlying ideology.The global financial crisis in2008enforced the relation between America and China into anew stage. Compared with the great economic depression in America, Chinese economy remindsthe rapid and stable development by a series of effective policies. The contrast of economicdevelopment draws great attentions of American media and economists. Hence news discoursesabout Chinese economy are issued by the media increasingly. Driven by interests from variouspolitical and authoritative institutions, the American news discourses imply the differentideologies and meaning which can exert a subtle effect on readers. This thesis intends to analyze50economic review discourses about Chinese economy form2009to2011published byAmerican mainstream media such as CNN, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Thestudy aims to reveal the underlying ideologies and political purposes by applying methodologiesof CDA.Based on the framework of Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar, the thesis analyzesthe English economic news discourses published by American main media after the financialcrisis. The study uncovers the ideology hidden behind the language and the discourse meaningby using the main critical discourse analysis methods, such as classification, modality,transformation, and so on so forth. The present study finds that the analyzed review discoursesselect fewer imperative words, because most of American economists consider that thecooperation between America and China is significant during the period after the globalfinancial crisis. But affected by the political, historical and cultural factors, American media have a biased view to see Chinese economic development and distort the related policies.Chinese economic growth has been described as a threat to the economic development in othercountries, natural recourses, the stableness of global economy, American status in internationaleconomy and other aspects. Through the lexical choice and linguistic transformation, thecollected economic reviews represent the viewpoints of “China Economic Threat Theory”.The significance of this study is in the following aspects: First, this study proves that CDAis feasible and useful to analyze the economic review discourses. Second, the research on CDAis helpful for the language users to increase their critical thinking and judgmental skills in orderto avoid being misled by the western media. Third, this study provides some beneficialimplications to language learning and teaching.