A Critical Analysis Of The Attitude Conveyed In American News Reports On Shanghai Expo

By combining Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework with Martin’s Appraisal Theory, the thesis conducts a critical study of the evaluative resources in American news reports concerning the event of world exposition held in Shanghai, China in2010with the aim to find out the attitude American media hold in the reports and the underlying ideologies shaping the reports. It also investigates how the underlying ideology is constructed so as to be easily accepted by readers and the social factors against which the ideology is formulated. Twenty two pieces of news reports are collected as samples from American mainstream media i.e. the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, U.S.A.Today and CNN and the collected data have been analyzed in the light of Appraisal Theory on micro level and under the three-dimensional framework on macro level with the combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches. After analysis, it is found that many evaluative resources are employed in American reports on Shanghai Expo and more negative evaluative resources are applied by American reporters when it comes to the evaluation of China, Chinese and Shanghai Expo, that is to say, American media hold a negative attitude and ideological positioning in the reports. It is also found that evaluative language is strategically deployed to construct the ideology which is, as revealed in the thesis, closely related to political, economical and cultural factors. The study shows that news language is not a straight reflection of the reality, but is shaped as well as shapes social contexts. It also demonstrates that the analytical mode i.e. the combination of three-dimensional framework with Appraisal Theory will serve as a broadening and enriching to the traditional CDA study and proves the effectiveness of Appraisal Theory in the critical analysis of news discourse.