A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Disaster News Reports

Critical discourse analysis,a problem-oriented approach,is widely applied to the news discourse analysis.The study analyzes the news reports about Tianjin warehouse blast on August 12 th in the New York Times from the perspective of CDA.The thesis elaborates on how the American media reports the disaster and reveals how the ideologies of reporters are concealed in the discourse and how the ideas are transmitted to readers implicitly.Through the critical analysis of western reports,the thesis intends to examine whether the reporters follow some patterns and reveal the close relationship between discourse and ideology.Based on the three-dimensional framework of Fairclough,the thesis employs Halliday's Systematic Functional Grammar and the related concept about perspective.According to Fairclough,there are three stages of discourse analysis: description,interpretation and explanation.In the level of description,the thesis focuses upon the text features and describes the samples from transitivity,lexical classification and transformation.The thesis conducts an interpretation on the discursive production,distribution and consumption from the angles of intertextuality and perspectivization.At the stage of explanation,the thesis looks into the elements of politics,culture and history to expound the reasons of word choice and unveil the ideology behind the discourse.The thesis finds that disaster news reports like the political coverage are not “neutral”or “objective”,which could act as medium to convey the ideology of the dominant group.The reporters of the New York Times connect the explosion with other elements in which the blast is distorted and in some extent further from truth.Some western journalists exaggerate problems and create a tense atmosphere,which constructs a negative image of the government and stresses the residents' helplessness and panic.There are great differences between two nations in politics,economy and culture.The bilateral relationship is filled with ups and downs.It shapes the reporters' opinions on China,which are reflected in the discourse.Finally,the readers are suggested to cultivate critical awareness and apply the critical thinking to reading and learning.