A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Chinese And American News Reports

News reports will transmit the information to the public in the principle of truth,objectiveness and timeliness,however,they can be influenced by social cultural value since the journalists often embed their personal bias in them.Critical Discourse Analysis aims to reveal the relationship between language and social ideology.It provides an efficient way to analyze the differences of cultural ideology hidden in language differences in the news reports of different countries.Based on systemic functional grammar of Halliday and three-dimensional theory of Fairclough,15 samples on Modiano winning Nobel Prize in 2014 respectively from Chinese and American main medias are collected to conduct a critical discourse analysis with a quantitative and qualitative method.Fairclough’s three-dimensional model can be applied to form the basic framework of this thesis,meanwhile,a large number of examples will be analyzed by the systemic functional grammar of Halliday to draw the following conclusion:In description stage,Chinese medias mainly employ neutral words while neutral words and derogatory words are primarily adopted in American reports;there are some similarities in distribution of process types in transitivity of Chinese and American reports,but after the participants,process types and circumstances of transitivity are comparatively analyzed,it is found that Chinese reports mainly report his winning,recognition of his works and his dedication to literature.On the contrary,American side questions his achievement in literature,reports his works without extensive topics,high circulation,or high popularity in English-speaking countries,his loveless family and poor social skills;the number of modal operators and modal adjuncts in American reports is much larger than that of Chinese reports and they all convey subjective judgment.In contrast,they are applied to show tense and common sense in Chinese reports;In interpretation stage,a large number of Direct Speeches of positive ideas and direct quotations from the other news sources are employed by Chinese side to achieve the authority and reliability of reports.Conversely,American side adopts Indirect Speeches of negative ideas and vague news sources to question the fact that Modiano won Nobel Prize;In explanation stage,the different positions of the news media of both sides exist because Chinese reports prefer to be positive while American side is inclined to be"desperate news".In addition,Chinese traditional culture advocates"collectivism","benevolent love","harmonious",’"respect authority","reserved and indirect expression".On the contrary,"individualism,individual right,individual freedom,culture with sense of sin,direct expression" are praised highly in American traditional culture.The study shows that Chinese news reports focus on the fact that Modiano won Nobel Prize and are mainly positive reports,while American medias constantly question the fact with a critical eye.The results will manifest that the political features and remarkable nationality are reflected in the news reports,and the choice of the language in news reports is the best way to express them.