A Critical Discourse Analysis On Chinese And American Mainstream Media’s News Reports About Diaoyu Island Disputes

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) or critical linguistics is a linguistic theoryborn in the1970s. It is the critical analysis of the linguistic characteristics of thediscourse and the social-cultural context in which discourse emerges. The aim of CDAis to uncover the hidden ideologies and power relations behind the discourse. Newsreports, particularly political news texts which are endowed with rich ideologicalmeanings and social relationship, are the main research object of CDA.Over the past few years, the dispute over the Diaoyu Islands has been a hot issuein Asia and even in the world. The dispute seems to be a territorial problem betweenChina and Japan. However, conclusion is drawn from careful analysis of all thefactors involved that the United States is closely connected with the dispute and playsa more important role than Japan.Under the framework of Fairclough’s three dimensional model and Halliday’sSystemic Functional Linguistic theory, this thesis tries to analyze the reports mainlyfrom the two countries’ mainstream media, display the differences of the twocountries’ reports and further uncover their characteristics reflected by the differencesand concerns of dealing with international affairs. From the perspective of dialecticallinguistic philosophy and critical discourse analysis, Fairclough’s three dimensionalmodel provides a rather systematic theoretical framework of news discourse analysis，including three stages, that is, textual stage, interpretive stage and the explanatorystage. Meanwhile, Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics theory integratesCritical Discourse Analysis and social background analysis methods. It strives toadopt quantitative and qualitative methods in terms of transitivity, propositions andlexical classification, drawing an expertise from sociolinguistics, sociology,psychology and mass communication and devoting to revealing the impact ofideology on discourse. Also, the thesis chooses reports from China Daily and NewYork Times as the research objects and further makes contrastive analysis of thedispute over the Diaoyu Islands on text level, discourse practice and social practice. Through the analysis of the selected samples, the thesis has found that there areideological inclinations and power relations behind the seemingly impartial andobjective news reports. The journalists meticulously embedded the news discourses inthe text through different linguistic forms. Journalists’ viewpoints and the stance aresubject to the influence of the society. The news discourse not only represents thesocial realities but also plays an indispensable role in constructing society.