Critical Discourse Analysis Of The Reports About The Scottish Independence Referendum

Critical discourse analysis (CDA), rising in the1980s, has become a mature and vitalapproach in the analysis of linguistics according to Fairclough and other linguists’ perseveringresearches. CDA is based on Halliday’s systemic functional grammar and makes Fairclough’sthree-dimensional framework (Description, Interpretation, Explanation) its theoreticalframework. Quite different from the previous linguistics theories, the mainstream linguisticsemphasizes on language,culture and tradition and the influence among them. CDA puts evenmore emphasis on society, power, political stance and ideology and other elements in theconstruction of discourses, besides the consideration of the interaction of language and culture.CDA pays attention to how ideologies, power and political stances influence the way languageor discourse is arranged in social contexts.And therefore, CDA consistently pays attention tosocial and historical conditions, and aims to expose what is seemingly objective actually farfrom the truth in discourses.News discourse is one of the important research objects of CDA. Because of the interestin CDA and the doubt of objectivity and impartiality of news reports, a recent major piece ofinternational political news, i.e. the reports about the Scottish Independence Referendum hasbeen chosen as linguistic data by the author to be analyzed in detail, aiming at disclosing someimportant information little known and hidden in the language. This analysis can provide uswith new thinking in news reading and interpretation. The analysis of the chosen data in thisthesis is on the basis of Fairclough’s three dimensional framework. Firstly, it’s a detaileddescription of the language features of the linguistic data. Halliday’s systemic functionalgrammar plays a crucial role on this first stage, including lexical classification, materialprocess and verbal process, passivization and so forth. Secondly, an interpretation of the datamainly contains analysis of news sources and modes of speech representation. Thirdly, bytaking political and social contexts and news values into consideration, a further explanation ofpower and ideology revealed on the first two stages is made and followed by the elaboration ofthe dialectic relation between language, power, and ideology.The reason why these data are chosen is that it is the latest international political news,which will surely capture people’s attention worldwide. And so its influence may beyond our imagination. However, news discourses are the representation of ideologies and power for theauthority. So the critical analysis of Scottish Independence Referendum can find out the realpictures of this political event, which can tell readers the underlying truth.The CDA of the reports about the referendum on Scottish independence is of greatsignificance in that it not only reveals the concealed ideology, but testifies the value of thetheory through real practices. At the same time, CDA can appeal to people’s critical awarenessin news reading, especially in political news reading, which helps to make active participantsout of passive recipients and enables them to get fresh inspiration.