| Emerging as a branch of critical linguistics in the 1980s, critical discourse analysis (CDA) is an important method of discourse analysis. By examining how the seemingly transparent language use controlled by the powerful can influence readers’ ideology, CDA unveils the relationship between language, ideology and power. In recent years, CDA is more often adopted in the analysis of political and news discourse both at home and abroad so as to discover their hidden ideology. However, the CDA research of news discourse in China is primarily concerned with American and Chinese texts to the neglect of those from other countries, and the theoretical framework of these studies is not detailed and clear enough. In this present study, therefore, news reports about the Snowden event were collected from as many sources as possible and critical analysis was conducted on them under a more detailed theoretical framework so as to find out their hidden ideology.With Fairclough’s three-dimensional model as the theoretical framework and Halliday’s systemic functional grammar (SFG) as the analytical tool, a comparative critical study was conducted of news reports about the Snowden event so as to unveil their hidden ideologies and social contexts. The 35 news samples selected in this thesis consist of 10 American reports,10 UK reports,7 reports from other western countries and 8 Asian reports. The critical analysis was carried out in three stages. In the description stage, linguistic features of these reports were described in terms of transitivity, lexical choices and modality. In the interpretation stage, both intra-textual coherence (in terms of noun phrase and subordinate clause) and intertextuality (in terms of news source and reporting mode) were discussed so as to see how reporters mix their own evaluation with reality through certain structures. In the explanation stage, causes of different ideologies in different news reports were examined in terms of political, historical and social factors.Through critical analysis, it is found that the seemingly neutral reports may hide different ideologies. US reporters strongly oppose to Snowden, trying to portray him as a traitor who should receive a trial; Chinese (including Hong Kong) and Russian reporters, on the contrary, take a welcoming attitude towards Snowden, and depict him as a hero who should be protected by law; in Japan and Taiwan, the two US allies, reporters are on the side of the US government, and reporters from NATO countries such as the UK, France, Australia, Canada claim protection of privacy without taking a clear stance. Such difference is caused not only by the ideological opposition between capitalism and socialism, but also the international tensions between the superpower US as well as its allies, and two great powers as China and Russia.This study has important implications in that it may complement the theoretical framework of CDA and provide more reliable and representative analysis results by selecting large enough linguistic data. It also proves that different news reports hide different ideologies, which make the news not absolutely neutral, but biased to some extent. Therefore, it is extremely necessary for readers to think critically while reading so as to find out which is reality and which is reporter’s own evaluation. |
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