A Critical Discourse Analysis Of The New York Times' News Reports About "The Belt And Road Initiative"

“The Belt and Road Initiative” stems from the two proposals put forward by President Xi Jinping when he visited Central Asia and Southeast Asian countries in September 2013 and October 2014 respectively.Since then,“the Belt and Road Initiative” have won supports from more than 100 countries and international organizations,including the United States.Many American think tanks and the mainstream media have paid more attention to “the Belt and Road Initiative” and have published many research reports and policy recommendations.The New York Times,as an influential newspaper in the United States,even the world today,has reported “the Belt and Road Initiative” many times.Founded in 1851,The New York Times has been developing for 154 years now.To some extent,it can represent the voice of the mainstream American Society.Therefore,through the study of reports of “the Belt and Road Initiative” in The New York Times,the stance and value orientation of the United States to “the Belt and Road Initiative” can be foreseen.Critical Discourse Analysis(also known as CDA)originated in the West.With the decades of development,critical discourse analysts have gradually constructed its theories and constantly explored new perspectives in CDA.CDA focuses on the following three aspects: the relationship between discourse and ideology,the relationship between discourse and society,and the relationship between discourse and power.Based on related theories of Critical Discourse Analysis,this thesis makes an analysis of twenty news reports selected in The New York Times in recent two years.According to Fairclough?s Three-dimensional analysis model,the analysis process includes three stages: description,interpretation and explanation.The first stage,based on Halliday?s Systemic-Functional grammar,explores the linguistic features of discourse from the perspectives of lexical choice,transitivity,transformation and modality;the second stage,through the analysis of the source of news,interprets the intertextuality of the text;the last stage explains the relationship between discourse and social practice through the analysis of different institutions and social environment.Through the analysis,the paper draws the following conclusions:1)News reports are not as impartial as reporters claim,but often demonstrate ideology,power and control.In discourse,ideology and power are often embedded in a hidden way,which could be found only through a critical analysis.2)The attitude of The New York Times toward “the Belt and Road Initiative” led-by China is negative.And Americans? attitude towards China is full of contradictions.On the one hand,The New York Times often overstates China Threat Theory.On the other hand,The New York Times tries to depict China as a weak image and doubts China?s ability to lead the initiative.3)With some hidden tricks such as biased vocabularies,different types of verb processes,vague news sources,and so on,news reporters employ news discourse as a means of producing the unequal power relationship and misleading readers.Thus,it is of great importance for readers to learn how to read news reports in a critical way.