A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Chinese And American Political News Reports

This thesis selects 30 news reports related with the magnificent military parade in commemoration of 70 th anniversary of victory of War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression from Chinese and American mainstream media and carries out a comparative analysis of Chinese and American news reports from the perspective of CDA,thereby exploring the implicit ideology of Chinese and American news reports.This paper combines the methods of qualitative and quantitative analysis on the basis of Fairclough’s three-dimensional model and Halliday’s systemic functional grammar(SFG).In the description and interpretation stages,a comparative study of 30 news reports is conducted,a quantitative analysis of process types,mood types and modal verbs is carried out,and the effect of and the reason for these linguistic features are interpreted.In the explanation stage,considering the institutional context of Chinese and American media,the social and historical background of the war and China and America’s different systems,this paper further explains the relationship of language and ideology and explores how media can embed the political standpoints and ideologies in the language.The research discovers that Chinese and American media construct their respective standpoints and reflect their ideologies through different textual devices.The similarities and differences of Chinese and American news reports in transitivity,mood and modality are as follows:(1)As to the transitivity system,both of Chinese and American news reports rely on a higher percentage of material,verbal and relational processes.Chinese media employ a higher percentage of material and relational processes than American media,indicating that Chinese media pay more attention to the event itself,while American media enjoy a relatively higher proportion of verbal processes,showing that American media are more concerned with all parties’ viewpoints towards this event.(2)As to the mood and modality,the declarative mood accounts for the highest proportion in both Chinese and American news reports,and the imperative and interrogative moods are rarely used,showing that Chinese and American news reports obey the general rule of objectivity.Both Chinese and American media have a higher proportion of modalization than modulation;however,more modal verbs in possibility appear in American media,illustrating that American media doubt China’sintention of V-day parade and arouse readers’ thinking.Considering the similarities and differences of the language features of Chinese and American media,this paper explains them from the social-cultural perspective and discloses the hidden ideologies.Chinese media emphasize the scene and arrangement of the V-day parade,while American media focus on the intention of Chinese government behind the military parade,which has a close relationship with different political systems and social cultures of the two.China,a socialist country and also the subject of this parade,is kind and friendly,actively establishing a positive national image and adhering to the path of peaceful development.America,the most powerful capitalist country,expresses disdain to this V-day parade held by the adversarial socialist country,doubts China’s intention and instigates China’s relationship with countries such as Japan and North Korea,striving for the most interests of its own country.From the above analysis,we can know that the combination of Fairclough’s three-dimensional model and Halliday’s SFG is a valid analysis method.Reporters use the language to express their ideas of a certain issue and also indirectly reflect the hidden ideology of the power group,and the comparative study enables us to clearly see the relationship between language and ideology and enhance critical awareness.