| Critical discourse analysis (CDA) also called critical linguistics or linguistic criticism, is a relatively new perspective of discourse analysis which arose in the late1970s. CDA not only studies what language is but also analyzes why language exists in different forms; it is not only interested in the meaning of language but also focusing on how language produces different meanings. In essence, critical discourse analysis is a society based analytic method, and therefore through analyzing linguistic forms it is intended to reveal the mutual influence between discourse and ideology and to explore their social roots.News discourse refers to a report which tells readers what is happening in the world. As a kind of public media discourse, news plays a great important role in modern society in virtue of its informativeness, timeliness and objectivity. However, in most occasions news reports contain many inconspicuous subjective ideologies, and readers are inclined to be misled by these hidden attitudes and values. Therefore, this thesis is designed to uncover the power relations and social ideologies of news discourse by choosing18pieces of news reports concerning the Kunming railway station terrorist attack on Marchl,2014. All these news samples are selected from five foreign mainstream media (BBC, CNN, USA Today, Reuters and The Washington Post) for their representative viewpoints on the Kunming terrorist attack.This study employs Fairclough’s Three-dimensional Framework as the theoretical basis. According to Fairclough’s theory, all types of discourse are the combination of three levels’concepts:text (verbal or written), discourse practice (production, distribution and consumption) and social practice. Corresponding to this feature, the critical analysis of discourse also includes three levels:description, interpretation and explanation. At the same time, this thesis adopts Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar (SFG) as the analytic tool. Halliday explores the relationship between language and society by connecting language with social structure and social context because he insists that society is a total semiotic system in which language system is only a special part. Consequently, it is more accurate to explain language in the social and cultural context. The SFG aims to explain the linguistic phenomenon from the perspectives of social function and communicative function, which is consistent with the core concept of critical discourse analysis. Therefore, SFG is regarded as the linguistic basis of critical discourse analysis and utilized by many scholars in their analysis. One of the main concepts of SFG is the three metafunctions:ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function. The ideational function means that language can record and reflect the state of the world and the human’s thinking; the interpersonal function refers that language can help establish, maintain and reflect interpersonal relationships; and the textual function emphasizes the function of constructing text and transmitting information. In accordance with Fairclough’s three step analysis method this thesis adopts three linguistic tools:lexical choice, transitivity and modality, which are proposed by Halliday in metafunctions to investigate the linguistic features of the selected news samples at the description stage. At the interpretation stage, the author mainly analyzes the intertextuality which is about the production of discourse. Discourse representation is a very important aspect of intertextuality, which is mainly realized by two ways:news source and mode of speech. As the analysis of news source has been applied at the first stage, this stage mainly analyzes the mode of speech. At the stage of explanation, the thesis explores the causes of hidden ideologies and power relations implanted in these news samples by deeply analyzing the social, historical and cultural contexts of these ideologies and values.Through the analysis of linguistic features and social contexts, this thesis finds that news reports cannot achieve one hundred percent authentic coverage of all events, and there are more or less hidden attitudes implanted in news discourse. The five selected media all use linguistic tools to distort the truth of the event on a different level and to control readers’opinions and attitudes. News discourse plays a very important role in reflecting the society, and in turn it also helps to construct the society. Therefore, readers are likely to recognize and reconstruct the world according to what they have read. This study aims to unveil the underlying ideological opinions and subjective bias behind the news reports and to help readers raise critical reading awareness and break away from the control of the texts. At the same time, the author of this thesis appeals to Western media to abandon the stereotype of hostile attitudes and to adopt a friendly and peaceful way to handle the relationship with China.In terms of the layout, this thesis contains six chapters. Chapter one briefly introduces the research background, purpose and significance of this study and the whole structure of this thesis. Chapter two casts a reviewing glance at the development and application of CDA at home and abroad. In the meanwhile, this chapter reviews the previous studies of the applications of CDA on news discourse and presents the features of this thesis. Chapter three is the detailed introduction of the theoretical framework, including Fairclough’s Three-dimensional Framework and Halliday’s SFG. Chapter four is the research methodology of this study, which is a qualitative dominated method with some quantitative analysis.This part proposes the research questions of this thesis and introduces the sources of the selected samples. In chapter five, accordingto Fairclough’s theory this thesis utilizes SFG tools to analyze the selected news samples at description level, interpretation level and explanation level. Chapter six is the conclusion of the thesis which besides concluding the major findings of the study, puts forward the implications and limitations of this thesis. |
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