Ideology Of News Reports On The Death Of Muammar El-Qaddafi In New York Times—From The Perspective Of Critical Discourse Analysis

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) has inherited Halliday"s thoughts of functional linguistics. It reveals the relationship between language and ideology, power and social context and exposes the discrimination, prejudice and control existing in the discourses through the analysis of the political ideologies implied in them. Its research focus is the hidden power relations and inequality between discourses and social culture. Moreover, it has drawn more and more attention due to the important influence in the fields of linguistics, sociology, journalism and cognitive psychology. Critics hold that language is in a dialectical relation with society inherently. News discourses, especially those political news reports, are produced under the impact of social ideologies. The thesis conducts a research on the four news reports about the death of Muammar el-Qaddafi, Libya’s former president, from the perspective of critical discourse analysis in the New York Times. Through the critical analysis of the political news discourses, it aims at revealing the hidden ideologies behind languageThis thesis employs Fairclough’s Three-Dimensional Mode as the theoretical framework and Halliday"s Systemic-Functional Grammar (SFG) as an analytical tool. Fairclough considers text, interaction and context as the three basic elements of discourse and regards it as the unification of text, discursive practice and social practice. Based on the idea, he puts forward three stages of CDA:description, interpretation and explanation. At the textual level, the transitivity system will be applied as the main analytical tool to describe and examine the linguistic features of discourses. At the discursive level, through the source and reporting mode analysis of reported speeches, the paper elaborates the production, distribution and consumption process of news discourse. At the social level, the social context which influences the construction of news discourses is analyzed, with further explanation of the deep reasons behind the reports and revelation of the ideologies concealed in news discourses.Analysis indicates the unequal power relation between the governments of United States and Libya, shows how mainstream media use language to spread the government’s ideologies and ideas, and illustrates the effectiveness of language as a social practice when the state wants to control people’s political thoughts.The research proves that the reports of news media are not completely objective or impartial and their contents and forms are unavoidably affected by their political ideologies. The news reports on Qaddafi’s death in New York Times are also under the influence of the US hegemony and power politics. The news makers artfully implant western value evaluation criteria into the reader’s mind. They try hard to advocate for the so-called democracy and legal system, flaunting the banner of supporting Libya’s revolution, and prettify the overturning of Qaddafi’s regime as Libyan people’s own choices. Through the analysis and interpretation, we confirm the feasibility and effectiveness of critical discourse analysis in the researches on the relationship between language and ideology. And we come to see the necessity, for a nation or people, of strengthening their international communications and enhancing their media influence to get more discursive power in international affairs. Besides, it is expected that this research can enhance people’s critical reading awareness.