| Peter Liang case remains as an American news story about justice,privilege and race according to The Washington Post,attracting attentions of both American and Chinese society.As a research hotspot,news discourses are studied from various perspectives,whereas the combination of transitivity system and content analysis is scarcely adopted.With news reports on Peter Liang case from The Washington Post as its data,process types in transitivity system as its analytical framework,this thesis endeavors to explore the "facts" construction of Peter Liang case by drawing on content analysis method.Three research questions are to be answered:(1)What process types are employed in reports on Peter Liang case?(2)What "facts" theme clusters are constructed through using these process types?(3)What media discourse features can be concluded from the process types employment and theme clusters construction in Peter Liang case reports?The analysis reveals that(1)The functions of six transitivity process types in news discourse show variations based on general functions discussed in Halliday's Transitivity System.They together present this case in an objective and well-balanced manner.With material and behavioral processes to describe actions of main actors and verbal processes to embrace various voices abundantly and evenly,the newspaper as a whole presents this event with objective language forms.Mental and relational processes are two major tools to express attitudes of voice sources in the newspaper.Relational processes also play a crucial role in identifying the themes of "facts".Besides"showing existence",existential processes are predominantly used to show prestige and affirmation of legal professionals in this penal case.(2)Four main themes including "depicting the shooting case","image portraying of Peter Liang","image portraying of victims" and "tracking judicial process of this case" are primarily constructed by the newspaper and lawyers,taking mostly material and relational processes.They are depicted differently by various voices with different attitudes expressed.(3)It can be concluded that the news is presented with objectivity in terms of transitivity process employment,the voices of these reports are balanced,and themes of this case are well-focused.However,some particularities including delicate misinterpretation of the officer's actions,neglect of reasons for decisive attitude reversal,and inauthentic reporting on actions of Asian Americans reflect the social and political influence on news discourse which leads to the filtering selectiveness of the news media.The research shows the feasibility of the combination of content analysis with transitivity system to investigate discursive construction of "new facts".It also casts insights on news reading,news reading teaching and news writing teaching. |
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