A Contrastive Analysis Of Chinese And American News Reports On Chinese Antitrust Investigations Of US Companies

A fair market is the best driving force to stimulate innovation. With the increasing call for high-quality and cost-efficient development, Chinese administration takes up the role as the promoter for reform. They are clearing market entry barrier as well as providing the platform for innovation. During this process, the interest of multinationals enjoying preferential policies is explicitly affected. In 2014, Chinese government?s intense investigation on foreign ventures operating in China is gaining momentum with US high-tech enterprises ranking high on the list. In response, Chinese and US media?s perspective on the event is divergent.Based on Fairclough?s three dimensional model and Halliday?s systematic-functional grammar, our paper selects 3 sets of news on Qualcomm and Microsoft antitrust investigation and the ripple effects in both countries. In an attempt to highlight the transitivity choices and discourse orders of both sides, we aim to decode the tight coupling between discourse and their nation?s specific history of social practice.The analysis entitles us to find shifting emphases by China and US media. Firstly, the examination of transitivity features in the description phase shows that verbal process, material process and relational process take the lead, whereas mental process, existential process and behavioral process account for a minor percentage. Then, at the interpretation stage, for one thing, opting for different modes of representation and news sources verifies their interest conflict. For another thing, the configuration of news sources appeals to nations? interest. At the explanation level, we can conclude that linguistic differences root from Chinese and US latent ideological conflict, manifested from political, economic and cultural aspect. Therefore economic news reports are surely contextualized by national ideology and social cultural background.The research is theoretically and practically meaningful. Theoretically, the research contributes to the application of Fairclough?s model of critical discourse analysis on economic news reports. Practically, the research will help to raise people?s critical consciousness when reading business discourse.