A Comparative Study Of Sino-american News Reports On Prism Scandal From The Perspective Of Critical Discourse Analysis

Objectivity should be an essential characteristic of the news report, since its basic function is to transmit information to the public. However news reports can not be completely objective and value-free, for the text producer holds ideology of a given social culture and keeps his own stance toward a news event. While composing the news text, the producer implants his attitudes and opinions, consciously and unconsciously, into the report via linguistic choices, which could exert influence on the readers.This thesis reports a critical discourse analysis on 20 news reports selected from the Chinese and the American media, which aims at making a comparison of the stances and attitudes toward Prism Scandal held by both sides. With Fairclough’s three-dimensional theory as the theoretical framework and Halliday’s Systemic-Functional Grammar as the analytical tool, the analysis is carried out at the textual, discursive, and social practice level. The study is conducted to answer four questions: 1) What are the linguistic features of the two sets of news reports? 2) How do the text producers transmit their own stances and attitudes through linguistic choices? 3) What are the differences in stances and attitudes revealed in the texts? 4) What are the factors resulting in such differences? Results of the study show that the two sets of texts are similar in the linguistic features but different in attitudes and in foucs of attention. The Chinese media focus on the U.S. government, emphasizing America’s fault and responsibility; while the American media try to direct the public’s attention to the legality and morality of Snowden’s disclosure. It is not a coincidence but a natural outcome for them to report the same event from different perspectives, owing to the impact of a series of factors, among which the main factors are difference in freedom of press and concerns about national security.