| Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is considered to be a new branch of linguistics, having been widely used to analyze all types of discourses such as official legal document, academic writings and public discourses since its birth in the 1980s. As news reports serve as an important way to offer information, more and more researchers are paying attention to the mass media to explore the relationship among language, power and ideology through news report analysis. Critical discourse analysis usually pays a keen attention to public discourses for the reason that people tend to accept public discourses in a passive manner. News agencies always claim that they are following the objective and impartial principle in their reports, but they are usually in the service of some certain authority. Therefore, CDA can reveal the effects of ideology hidden in language by analyzing news reports.According to the report about the eighteenth national people’s congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012, fighting against corruption becomes the distinctive political stance the Party has consistently adhered to. With the generation of a new central collective leadership in 2013, General Secretary Xi Jinping has been stressing that a cleaner government should be promoted in the corruption campaign. He emphasized to "put power into the cage" and "catch both the tigers and flies". It aims to resolutely and effectively investigate the discipline violation of leading officials especially corruption occurred in the public masses, thus making China’s anti-corruption campaign more aggressive and far-reaching.The current research focuses on the critical analysis of the news reports about Chinas anti-corruption from American mainstream news media The Washington Post under the theoretical framework of Critical Discourse Analysis. This paper attempts to answer the following three questions:(1) What are the features of lexical choice and the use of transitivity in the news reports used in The Washington Post? (2) What are the features of news sources, the reporting modes and the use of modal auxiliary verbs in The Washington Post? (3) Are the news reports in The Washington Post on China’s anti-corruption objective and neutral? What kind of ideologies and intentions are carried by the news discourse?Based on Fairclough’s three-dimensional model and Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar, a research is conducted on fifteen news reports about China’s anti-corruption from The Washington Post. Analysis is made at three levels:(1)the descriptive level, at which the linguistic features and ideational meanings of news discourses from this newspaper The Washington Post are explored through transitivity, lexical choices and modality; (2) the interpretive level, at which the intertextuality and interpersonal implications of news discourses are investigated by virtue of news sources and reporting modes; (3) the explanatory level, at which the social environment and textual functions of news discourses are discussed by the examination of political, economic, historical and social contexts domestically. The power and ideology hidden in the news discourse are unveiled at last.The first chapter serves as an introduction to the background of the thesis in addition to the objectives and significance of the research. The organization of the thesis will be elaborated at the end of this part. The second chapter defines some related concepts in critical discourse analysis. The relationship among discourse, ideology and power is also explored. Besides, this part presents the history and development of related theory on the critical discourse analysis both at home and abroad. The third chapter lays out the theoretical foundation of this research, including the three-metafunctions of Halliday’s Systemic-functional grammar and Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework. The fourth chapter introduces research methodology used in this research, including data collection, the research procedures and analytical tools. The fifth chapter constructs a detailed discussion and critical discourse analysis of the sample news reports on China’s anti-corruption by using the descriptive, interpretive and explanative stages of Fairclough’s three-dimensional model. The sixth chapter draws a conclusion of this thesis by generalizing the major findings. Some limitations in this present study and suggestions for further researches are pointed out in the end.Significance of the thesis mainly falls into two aspects:theoretically speaking, it once again proves the applicability of Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework and Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar in analyzing news discourse. Practically speaking, it activates readers’ ability to appreciate news and helps them acquire real information from news reports by exploring news discourses from CDA perspective. What is more, critical investigations in news discourse are helpful for Chinese teachers and students to enhance the foreign language teaching and learning.Many linguistic devices are utilized in The Washington Post to present the news relevant to China’s anti-corruption, for instance lexical choice, transitivity, mood, and modality and so on. The systematic analysis of linguistic devices in the paper shows that concerning the issue of China’s anti-corruption, The Washington Post carries some hidden ideologies against China, and portrays a relatively positive image of China. |
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