Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA)is an important branch of discourse analysis field and mainly studies the relations among language,power and ideology.As a newly appeared approach,CDA not only focuses on the structure and meaning of the discourse,but also focuses on exploring the ideology hidden behind the discourse by the social background which the discourse produces.News discourse,as a main source which people gain the information,should ensure its authenticity and objectivity.However,news discourse can’t guarantee its objectivity,because it is affected by the author’s personal attitude,the background of news events,and ideology.CDA can provide theoretical basis and research methods for news discourse.Through the analysis of the news discourse,this thesis can reveal the relationship between ideology and power behind the news discourse,and help readers to understand the real intentions of the author and the position which the political interest groups represent.This thesis makes a comparative analysis from the perspective of CDA by selecting eight news reports from Chinese official news websites and American official news websites on South China Sea Arbitration.The thesis divides the arbitration into four stages,that is,the initiating of the South China Sea Arbitration,the lawsuit stage of the South China Sea Arbitration,the hearing stage of the arbitration and the final award of the arbitration.Corresponding to these four stages,this thesis respectively chooses four news reports from the two websites for CDA.This thesis takes Fairclough’s three-dimensional model as the theoretical framework and Halliday’s systemic-functional Grammar as the theoretical foundation.The chosen news reports are analyzed from the perspective of description,interpretation and explanation.At the description stage,it mainly analyzes the chosen news reports from three aspects,namely lexical choice,transitivity and modality,and tries to explain the similarity and differences in linguistic features between Chinese news and American news.At the interpretation stage,it analyzes the chosen news reports from two aspects,namely news sources and reporting modes,and tries to interpret how to embed the ideologies into Chinese news and American news.At the third stage,that is explanation,it mainly focuses on analyzing institutional,situational and cultural factors between China and America,and tries to reveal the information which embeds in Chinese news and American news.Through analyzing,some findings are concluded in this thesis.At the descriptive stage,from the perspective of lexical classification,Chinese news mainly uses neutral words,while American news uses more negative and neutral words.In transitivity,the distribution of the transitivity is similar both in Chinese news and American news,while through analyzing,it can be found that Chinese news mainly uses it to show the objective truth,however,American news highlights the negative image of China.In modality,Chinese news mainly uses it to express objective truth,while American news uses it to express their subjective guess.At the interpretative stage,Chinese news uses more directly cited reports,and focuses on using the reports in specific sources to ensure the authority of the news,but,American media indirectly cites the news from unspecific sources,which aims to express its attitudes and stances.At the explanation stage,the difference in discourse practice is explained from the perspective of institutional,situational and cultural factors.Then,further study is to disclose the differences in attitude and ideology between Chinese news and American news about the relevant news on the South China Sea Arbitration.Based on the critical discourse analysis about Chinese news and American news above,this thesis attempts to reveal the ideologies hidden behind the news from the two websites,further to help the readers to enhance critical reading awareness and read news reports in a critical way. |