Critical Discourse Analysis On British News Reports About China Overseas Mining Exploration

With the development of the economy and the great demand for energy, China is carrying out Going Out policy for energy development, encouraging domestic enterprises to head into international market to explore mineral resources overseas.China overseas mining exploration has attracted the world’s attention, and many media have made reports about it.The thesis, with its theoretical framework based on the Three-dimensional Model developed by Fairclough, the representative of Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA) and with reference to Martin’s attitude system and Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar, analyzes the British mainstream media’s reports on China overseas mining exploration. In order to find out the attitudes and ideology reflected by language in these reports, UAM Corpus Tool is used as the basic research instrument to conduct calculations and statistics about the language features. The study mainly has the following findings.By text analysis, it is found out that firstly, the number of negative words used to describe China is almost twenty eight times as many as that to describe “the other side”(referring to the country/area where China explores the mineral resources). The heavy use of these negative words has constructed a bad image of China, showing the media’s opposition towards China overseas mining exploration. Secondly, material,relational and verbal processes are more often used in the reports. In the material processes describing China’s action, more than 60% are used to imply negative attitude to China. By using relational processes, reporters directly define China as a selfish, merciless and swashbuckling nation. As for the verbal processes, it is found that the quotations from “the other side” are almost three times as those from China.By quoting remarks from “the other side” which are seemingly objective but display opposition to China, reporters can express their own opinions and ideology. Thirdly,the use of nominalization and passivization in transformation has highlighted China’s actions and concealed the real actor who should be responsible for events.By analysis of discursive practice, it is discovered by the study that reporters have provided sources for 129 pieces of information. Among the three types of news source, explicit source has taken up more than half. At the same time, more than half of the reported speeches belong to the direct speech type. In other words, the heavy use of sources with exact names in direct speech can guarantee the objectivity andauthenticity of the news reports. However, the information with explicit sources is mainly quoted from “the other side” which actually expresses the negative attitudes towards China overseas mining exploration. In this way, reporters have delivered their own opinion implicitly, and at the same time reduced readers’ psychological defense.The text and discursive features revealed above in British news reports about China overseas mining exploration have reflected their negative attitudes towards China, which is closely connected with the nature of media and the social context.This study not only discloses the hidden attitude and ideology in the news discourse,but also analyzes its situational, institutional and social contexts. It can help to enhance readers’ critical reading awareness on the one hand, and on the other hand, it can also bring some implications to our nation’s overseas mining exploration.