A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Reports On "Chinese Military Parade"

In recent years, news is the basic source for people to obtain the information, and news discourse is the significant tool for reporters to show their ideas and attitudes.Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA) is an interdisciplinary approach to analyze the relationship among language, power and ideology. On Sep. 3, 2015, China held the grand military parade to mark the 70 th anniversary of the end of World War II, which became the focus around the world. It is necessary to take advantage of CDA method to analyze this event, which could help readers to get the reporter’s value, standpoint and way, and learn about the hidden ideology behind this event.This paper collects all of the 42 news reports on Chinese Military Parade to commemorate the 70 th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, based on The Washington Post and The Daily Mail from July to September, 2015. They are two important newspapers with great influence in the world, one is from the United States and the other is from the United Kingdom. The samples are analyzed based on two theories, Michael Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar and Norman Fairclough’s Three-Dimensional Model.In detail, the data would be analyzed at three levels: first of all, lexical choice,transitivity, modality, and passivization are the analytical tools at description level;secondly, at interpretation level, the modes of representation are used to analyze the text production process, and illustrate the reporter’s hidden ideology; and then at explanation level, on the background of globalization, this paper would try to analyze samples in the social context and find out the links between discourse and social practice.The study shows that reports on Chinese military parade from both media do not present the reality neutrally and objectively. On the contrary, they specialize in exaggerating and distorting the facts. About the event of Victory-day military parade,the two media pay much attention to “China threat” instead of China’s peaceful development. In fact, readers are victims who are inevitably influenced by the news discourse with a reporter’s ideological tendency. This thesis could not only helpreaders to have a comprehensive understanding of Chinese military parade, but also give China a referable view to deal with biased reports in the future.