| Global climate change is a worldwide problem faced by every country. China and the United States, as the representatives of developing countries and developed countries as well as two countries with the largest carbon emissions, take predominant parts in the problem. As is known as a consensus, climate change is not only a problem related to science and environment, but a problem associated with energy, economy and politics, which closely connects with national interests of different countries. When involved in climate change issues, news reports, as one of the most important means of communication, tend to imply certain ideology, and pay close attention to national interests as well as common interests of human beings.Based on M.A.K Halliday's systemic functional linguistics (SFL), the thesis deals with the news reports from the newspapers in both China and the United States during the Paris Climate Conference. In accordance with the outstanding influence and the greatest circulation, two newspapers in both China and the US are chosen as the sources of data, namely China Daily in China and the New York Times in the United States.From the two newspapers,30 news reports are collected in the period of the Conference from November to December,2015 for the study.15 news reports are collected from China Daily and the other 15 news reports are from the New York Times. Under the framework of critical discourse analysis (CDA), and with the methodology of qualitative, quantitative and contrastive analysis, the research makes an analysis of the collected data in terms of transitivity, news sources and reporting modes attempting to explore the differences and similarities of linguistic features, reporting strategies and purposes of them as well as unearths relevant causes.In terms of transitivity, in material processes, for topics like "Paris Agreement", the two newspapers adopt similar verbs to emphasize their positive effects. While for "China" and "the US", the two newspapers use different verbs to emphasize different or even opposite deeds conducted by the two countries. The similar situation occurs in relational processes. "Paris Agreement" is attributed or identified with positive features. In contrast, for "emissions cut", the two newspapers attribute or identify differently to stress different responsibilities of emissions cut. Obviously, the two newspapers have similarities in description of topics related to common interests of human beings, while on national interests, the results are different. As the second aspect, the authorities and officials occupy the largest news sources of both the two newspapers, and what follows up are international organizations and research institutions. In detail, through news sources, China Daily releases the latest news of the Conference, gives more speaking chance for developing countries and shows China's attitudes as a responsible great power. In contrast, the New York Times speaks for developed countries, and implies that China should undertake more emissions cutting tasks through voices of research institutions. The interest competitions between China and the US are concealed in different distributions of news sources. As for reporting modes, in order to control the reporting content in some extent, both newspapers adopt indirect speech as their frequently used mode with different verbs to show their different attitudes.It is found that the news reports are not totally objective but influenced by ideology, national interests and common interests of human beings. As a developing country, China has shown a more cooperative attitude and actively makes its voice heard. In doing so, its resolutions and actions of green development, energy-saving and emission reduction are shown. Likewise, the US, a developed country, also holds an active attitude regarding this issue. While in terms of some specific issues, the US has shirked its responsibilities and imposed pressure on China in several issues, such as financial support and the burden of carbon emission.Therefore, it is advised that readers should treat the reports with a critical thinking, and reporters should reasonably employ limited discourse strategies to defend the national interests, through which way, both make contributions to environmental protection and climate change addressing. |
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