A Critical Discourse Analysis Of The Reported Speech In Political News Of People’s Daily And Washington Post

Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA) is an important approach in discourse analysis. It advocates analyzing the language features and social and historical backgrounds of public discourse, aiming at probe into the ideological meaning behind the language structure and further discloses the interrelations between ideology, power and language. Sino-Japanese relations are always the focuses of people. Since Japan’s unilateral declaration of the nationalization of Diaoyu Island in September, 2012, the Diaoyu Island incident has aroused more widespread international attention. The present study, from the perspective of the comparison of Chinese-English news discourse, makes critical analysis of the reported speech in forty-one news reports on Diaoyu Island incident in People’s Daily and Washington Post. Through the analysis of reported speech, this study devotes itself to reveal and compare the reporter’s viewpoint, attitude and purpose embedded behind the reported speech, so as to investigate the dependency relation between language and ideology, and help readers interpret Diaoyu Island incident more reasonably and objectively.This paper makes comparison and analysis of the reported speech in two newspapers from the following aspects: mode of the reported speech, source of the reported speech, reporting verbs and content of the reported speech by using both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Through the analysis, it is found that both People’s Daily and Washington Post strive for objectivity and fairness concerning reports on Diaoyu Island incident. The two newspapers have something in common. However, there exist obvious differences. On the part of the mode of the reported speech, firstly, both People’s Daily and Washington Post adopt more IS than DS or PDS in the news reporting about Diaoyu Islands incident, and this feature is more evident in People’s Daily. But most of indirect speech in People’s Daily is adopted in “speech-reporting news”, the reporters use ID to “project” the remarks and ideas of the important figures, authorities or social institutions, with least or no reporter’s comment or idea integrated, and seek for objectivity. On the other hand, IS adopted in Washington Post is, more often than not, integrated with reporter’s attitude or ideology, which may influence readers true understanding of the news reports. Secondly, Washington Post uses more DS and PDS than People’s Daily, which can be used to “re-interpret” the cited speeches in the new contexts. So reporters of Washington Post are more apt to integrate their ideology into the cited speeches and make use of the reported speeches to help serve their own purpose.With regard to news source of the reported speech, People’s Daily adopts more clear source of speech reporting, while Washington Post uses more semi-clear source of speech reporting. The adoption of more clear source of speech reporting by People’s Daily shows that the reporters earnestly want to keep the original voice unchanged, while Washington Post’s adoption of more semi-clear source of speech reporting indicates that the reporters intend to use these semi-clear source to release certain harsh words and shift responsibility or express their attitudes towards Diaoyu Island incident in a roundabout way.As far as the reporting verbs is concerned, both People’s Daily and Washington Post choose to use more neutral reporting verbs to sound unbiased, which meets with the requirement of the top newspapers. Moreover, People’s Daily adopts more positive reporting verbs, no matter it is talking about China-related content, US-related or Japan-related details. It indicates that People’s Daily’s reporters earnestly want to tell their readers the original meanings of the cited speeches with the least possible integration of their own ideology. Meanwhile, Washington Post uses more negative reporting verbs, which suggests that it is more critical. Especially, more than half of those negative reporting verbs are adopted in retelling China-related details, which indicates that Washington Post chooses to convey to its readers a negative image about China.As for the content of speech reporting, In People’s Daily, the cited speeches are all directly related to the Diaoyu Islands incident, or China’s determination of demanding its sovereignty over Diaoyu Island and its surrounding isles. People’s Daily wants to communicate to the world the true fact of the Diaoyu Islands incident and China’s attitude. Washington Post, as a third party of the Diaoyu Islands incident, knows very clearly that it should “take no position” in the dispute. But it cites many reported speeches that are not directly related to the event, or are simply a sort of groundless guesswork, or are clearly marked with biased attitude against China. By all those means Washington Post goes in a roundabout way in order to mislead the readers to get a very negative impression about China. Meanwhile, its stance on Diaoyu Island incident is clearly revealed.All in all, it can be seen that news reports are in no way objective, and the speech reporting in the news reports are not complete honest citations, in contrast, they are inevitably affected by the reporter’s attitude, stance and ideology. Besides, the present study provides a means of decoding ideology embedded in the deep level of the language through analysis of language surface(the reported speech), and help people interpret the reality reasonably and objectively. Meanwhile, it is conducive to cultivate readers’ critical reading and thinking.