A Critical Discourse Analysis Of News Reports On The Greek Referendum

The thesis analyses critically the discourse of Greek referendum which is,though a world-wide hot issue,hardly explored from the critical discourse analysis perspective.By adopting Fairclough's three-dimensional framework,the research makes a contrastive study on both the intertextuality features and social practice of the Greek referendum discourses from two newspapers,China Daily and The Independent.The research aims to reveal respectively the specific meanings constructed in the Greek referendum discourses,and to explain the social and cultural reasons for the different meaning constructions.The research data collected from LexisNexis database dates from May 1st to September 30th in 2015.In order to study the intertextuality features in the Greek referendum discourses,the analysis is conducted in four aspects,namely,genres,discourses,styles and social practice.Correspondently,the actional meanings,representational meanings and identificational meanings in the Greek referendum discourses are revealed.The research illustrates that different intertexuality features and meanings are constructed in the Greek referendum discourses in the two newspapers:With respect to genres in the Greek referendum discourses,The Independent shows more preference for the speech function of question and makes a dialogical appearance to draw readers' attention and cause readers to think deeply.The Independent explains reasons for Greece's mess and debt crisis and criticizes EU's treatment with Greece.Furthermore,China Daily and The Independent are both associated with speech functions of demand and offer.China Daily establishes a friendly image of China and a positive image of EU and also wishes EU and Greece to reach an agreement.In contrast,The Independent sets up a negative image of EU and a positive image of Greece and wants to see the breakup of euro zone.The Independent also emphasizes Britain's demands for its leading role in the EU.With respect to discourses in the Greek referendum discourses,China Daily and The Independent have similar representations of Greeks in the reports on politics,but different representations of Greeks in the reports on economy.In reports on economy,The Independent represents Greeks as individuals and gives their detailed information.It can be found that Britain and China are both concerned about Greece's politics,however,Britain shows more concerns about Greece's economy and China pays closer attention to world's economy.Furthermore,China Daily has more preference for perfect tense in its reports relating to China.China Daily places more emphasis on the effects and results of actions in the past,especially focuses on Greece's mistakes made in the past.With respect to styles in the Greek referendum discourses,The Independent makes a stronger commitment to truth and obligation than China Daily does.The Independent states the Greece's economic situation and Greece's future in an assertive tone and highlights EU's obligation.In addition,China Daily sets up a positive image of EU while The Independent makes an undesirable image of EU and wants to see Greece's rupture relationship with EU.Apart from discussing the intertextuality features,the research also analyzes the social practice in the Greek referendum discourses.The social practice sheds light on the social and cultural reasons for the different meaning constructions in the Greek referendum discourses from China Daily and The Independent,The social practice is discussed in four aspects:the European sovereign debt crisis,the development of China-Europe relations,Britain's return to Europe and differences between Chinese culture and British culture.The first aspect describes EU's and Greece's responsibility in the European sovereign debt crisis and states that China and Britain have different standpoints in the event of Greek referendum.The second aspect states China's close connection with EU on politics and economy which influences China's attitude towards EU.The third aspect states Britain's complex relationship with EU in which Britain keeps a neither close nor distant stand with Europe and wants to be the leader in EU.The last aspect states Chinese people's peace-loving character and British people's ambitious and adventurous character,which have different effects on China's and Britain's diplomatic relations with other countries respectively.Because of the limitation of time and energy,the research only applies Fairclough's analytical model to analyze the news reports.It's better to combine different analytical models to analyze the relevant news reports.In addition,the research refers to the social practice to explore the possible social and cultural reasons for the meaning constructions in the news reports.Due to the limitation of personal knowledge background,this part only gives a brief explanation of the social and cultural reasons but not a professional and in-depth analysis.