A Critical Discourse Analysis Of News Reports On "Chinese Dream" By Chinese And Western English-Language Media

Xi Jinping, who is the general secretary of the CPC Central Committee today, firstly putsforward and expounds the political concept of “Chinese dream” on November29,2012.“Chinese dream” quickly becomes the most popular word and topic around the world, whicharouses the wide attention and interpretation from Chinese and Western English-languagemedia.“Chinese dream” carries the new goal and developing direction of China, so it issignificant. However, the different ideologies of China and the West necessarily influence theinterpretation of the news discourses on “Chinese dream”, which is directly related to theChinese image.From the perspective of CDA, the present paper aims at contrastively analyzing anddisclosing the hidden ideologies behind the news discourses on “Chinese dream” by Chineseand Western English-language media with the Fairclough’s three-dimensional model being theframe, with the SFG and intertextuality being the analytical tools, and with the qualitative andthe quantitative research methods. The paper totally selects eight pieces of news discourses on“Chinese dream”, of which four are selected from Chinese English-language media: ChinaDaily and People’s Daily (English edition), and four are respectively selected from WesternEnglish-language media: BBC, CNN, USA Today and New York Times.Specifically, the contrastive analyzing of the news discourses on “Chinese dream” byChinese and Western English-language media is mainly conducted by the author from threelevels: text, discursive practice and socio-cultural practice. Firstly, the classification andmodality in SFG are chosen as tools at the level of text. Secondly, the analyzing of discursivepractice takes intertextuality as tool, mainly for the representation of the process of productionof discourses from its two aspects: news source and reporting mode. Finally, the level ofsocio-cultural practice aims at essentially explaining the different ideologies at the levels oftext and discursive practice from the perspective of political, economic and socio-culturalfactors.The present study shows that there exist ideological differences in the news discourseson “Chinese dream” by Chinese and Western English-language media. The news discourseson “Chinese dream” by Chinese English-language media are objective and the positiveChinese image is shaped. However, the news discourses on “Chinese dream” by WesternEnglish-language media is far from being objective with obvious ideological tendency and thenegative Chinese image is shaped. Facing the distorted interpretation of “Chinese dream”from Western English-language media, the Chinese English-language media should takeactive measures to timely response to their questioning and then builds a good Chinese image.