A Critical Discourse Analysis On Economic News In China Daily And The New York Times

Critical Discourse Analysis emerged from "critical linguistics" in 1970s,and now the two terms are usually used interchangeably.Critical Discourse Analysis emphasizes the contexts of the language use.It regards language as a social practice.The aim of the analysis is to discover the relationship among language,power and ideology.Since Critical Discourse Analysis began to be used as a new way to analyze news discourse in 1980s,many scholars and researchers have conducted Critical Discourse Analysis on news discourse from different aspects.Through the analysis,the linguistic characteristics of the news text can be discovered.The Critical Discourses Analysis aims to expose the discourse sources of dominance,power,bias and inequality which have always been taken for granted by the readers,thus finally to improve the readers' critical reading abilities.This thesis will conduct a Critical Discourse Analysis of the economic news from China Daily and The New York Times.The news items are all reports on economic issues during the Two Sessions in 2016.The study is to be conducted on the basis of Fairclough's "Three Dimensions of Discourse" with Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar as analytical tool.Through the comparative analysis of the news reports from the two countries,this study aims to answer the following three questions:1.What are the similarities and differences between Chinese and American newspapers in the aspect of lexical classification and modality?2.What are the differences between the journalists of the two countries in the choice of reporting modes and reporting words?3.What are the social determinants and the hidden ideologies in the Two Sessions-related economic news?After both quantitative and qualitative analyses,this study finds that the reports about the economic issues during the Two Sessions are ideology embedded.Readers'understanding of the news is influenced directly or indirectly by the journalists.The journalists choose different words,modality,reporting modes and so on to transfer different ideologies to readers.China Daily focuses on the new Five-Year Plan and the growth target that the government has set.Chinese journalists try to prove that the government sets this growth target with a very prudent attitude,and thus the target is both reasonable and realistic.Through various reports,Chinese journalists create a prosperous and promising image of China's economy.The news reports in China Daily could further strengthen people's trust and confidence in the government.However,The New York Times seems to concern more about the risks and problems that China will face in the process of realizing its growth target.American journalists show doubtful attitude towards the Chinese government.On the one hand,they recognize the rapid growth of China's economy.On the other hand,they try to damage China's economic image in the world.Americans usually think that their system is the most superior.Reporting China's economy negatively is just a way for them to maintain their own economic system and to eliminate the dissatisfaction of the western public.