Critical Discourse Analysis Of The News Reports On The South China Sea Arbitration From Global Times And The Guardian

Critical Discourse Analysis is used in many kinds of texts,most of which are news reports.With the development of the society,news is becoming the main tool for people to access to information about outside world.News reports about the South China Sea issues have been drawing much attention these years.This dissertation attempts to make a comparative analysis to the news reports on the South China Sea issues from Global Times and the Guardian,from the perspective of critical discourse analysis,by analyzing differences and reasons in classification,modality,and transitivity to shed light on ideological tendency hidden in language.The research is on the basis of theory of Fairclough‘s Three-dimensional Framework,taking Halliday‘s Systemic Functional Grammar as a research tool and combining strategies and features of news reports,as well as social context produced by texts.It chooses 15 news reports about the South China Sea Arbitration from the Guardian and 15 from Global Times from June to July in 2016 and discusses if Western media are inclined to take ideologies in politics,economy and cultures and so on into consideration in news reports about China.In addition,it also explores if Western media have some one-sided and obscure understandings of China in news texts.When analysing news reports on South China Sea Arbitration,firstly,the paper comparatively introduces backgrounds of two newspapers;secondly,by using Systemic Functional Grammar as a research tool,it makes a comparative analysis to news reports from both newspapers through Fairclough‘s Three-dimensional Framework;thirdly,it gives conclusion in the end,presenting major findings,explaining some limitations and giving some suggestions.Findings are in this study: 1.The image of China is shaped as a tough role in the Guardian,which is helpful for the publicity of the potential theory of China‘s threat.2.As purposes or motivations more or less are implied in reported speech,The Guardian tries the balance in distribution of reported speech without holding position to enhance convincingness in texts.However,it implies its stance in indirect speech.Global Times inserts its stance and strong attitude for China‘s good in both direct and indirect speeches.3.Politicians usually take advantage of discourse forms to hide unequal power relations.Reporters try to moderate discourse fight in a mild way in news for its objectivity.This study has some significance.For one thing,it can enhance readers‘ sensitivity to manipulation and lead readers to read news critically,which can increase their anti-manipulative sense and to some degree may change their wrong understandings of China;for another,it is helpful for China to know better its own role in international society as well as Western attitudes towards China and to make better foreign policies for publicity.