A Critical Discourse Analysis Of The News On President Xi Jinping's State Visit To The UK

As an approach to discourse analysis,Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA)puts more weight on the process and background of the discourse production besides the features of language itself to uncover the value system or ideology and the complex links among language,ideology and power concealed in the discourse.President Xi Jinping's state visit to the UK in October,2015 attracts the global attention and the mass media issue considerable reports on it.With the analysis of the news on the China-UK ties,the standard of the reception,the considerable trade deals and human rights from China Daily,the Guardian and the Washington Post,the thesis endeavors to figure out how the three newspapers present the ideologies by virtue of the languages.With the comprehensive application of Fairclough's three-dimensional model and Halliday's systemic functional grammar,the thesis analyzes the transitivity,passive voice and modality of news language in the textual level to discover the features of languages,then news sources,reporting modes and reporting verbs in the intertextual level and the historical,social,economic and political context of the news production to reveal the different ideologies in the three newspapers.The critical and comparative analysis of the 28 samples reveals that dominant ideologies are embedded in news,which directly or indirectly affects and controls the cognition,attitudes and ideologies of the public.China Daily shows China's attention and positive attitude to the state visit to the UK and the potential China-UK relationship.Through various reports,China Daily creates the image of China as an open,compatible,cooperative and responsible country which can exchange with others but condemns the intervention in the internal affairs in the name of the human rights.The Guardian presents the positive aspect as China but historical relationship and status between China and the UK,the doubt to human rights in China and the possible effect on the UK-US ties,which reflects the demand of the UK to strengthen its power and maintain its status.The Washington Post queries the actions of the UK and the China-UK ties with the roundups,which is consistent with its image in the news report as a great power participating in theaffairs in the world.These differences among the news agencies can be apparently attributed to their political stances and ideological orientations of the dominate power in each society;hence,the news report can not be absolutely objective and fair.In the meantime,the analysis will be affected by the analyst due to his or her thinking,cognition,values and can not be absolutely objective,either.But it just proves that the hidden ideology and power impact discourse and thus the readers in a subtle way.The thesis is written to make contributions to raise readers' awareness of ideology in the news report and strengthen the ability of critical thinking and anti-control awareness of public discourses with the help of the CDA.