Critical Discourse Analysis Of The Chinese Dream Related Reports In Chinese And American Mainstream Newspapers

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) was first proposed in the late 1970s, aiming to explore the hidden ideology in the discourse. It has been widely applied to the analysis of different kinds of discourses, especially the public discourses, among which news report is a popular analytical target. Due to its characteristics of being timely and widespread, news report is an important access for people to know what is going on in the world and the information that the news conveying can easily shape the readers’ attitudes and opinions. Therefore, it is of great significance to conduct a critical analysis on news reports, especially those on the topics of heated debate in the world, to reveal the hidden ideology in the discourse.When it comes to a topic of heated debate in the world, the Chinese Dream proposed by Xi Jinping, President of China, in 2012, is among the list. The proposal and the progress of the Chinese Dream have attracted great attention from newspapers all over the world, especially those from China and the United States. Therefore, this study selected ten news reports on the Chinese Dream from China Daily and Global Times, two major Chinese newspapers and ten from the New York Times and the Washington Post, two mainstream American newspapers. The text, discursive practice and socio-cultural practice of the selected news reports are analyzed respectively at three stages:description, interpretation and explanation within the framework of Fairclough’s Three-dimensional Model aided by Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar. At the first stage, the lexical choice, transitivity and modality are analyzed; the intertextuality including the news source and reporting mode are carried out at the second stage; at the last stage, the institutional context and the socio-cultural context of the news reports are illustrated in detail to explore the hidden ideology in the discourse.After having analyzed the twenty news reports at the three stages, this thesis has found that although there are similarities in lexical choice, transitivity, modality and intertextuality, the image of the Chinese Dream illustrated in American newspapers is different from that in Chinese newspapers, showing that the news reports are not neutral and objective as they are supposed to be. The Chinese reporters stress the uniqueness, significance, potential and feasibility of the Chinese Dream to construct a positive and responsible image of China, while the American newspapers pay more attention to the difficulties in realizing the Chinese Dream and advocate that the Chinese Dream is the illustration of China’s wide ambition, constructing an aggressive and undemocratic image of China.Theoretically, the present study can provide new angle for the research on Chinese Dream and enrich the application of CDA on news discourse. Practically, it can raise readers’awareness of critical reading and provide some implications for the Chinese universities and colleges in the thematic education of the Chinese Dream and for the Chinese media to counteract the distorted reports on China in the foreign news reports and to enhance the publicity of China’s image.