Critical Analysis Of News Reports On Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank From China Daily And New York Times

Critical Discourse Analysis,which emerged in 1970 s,is an interdisciplinary approach of language research and explanation of social problems.It aims to tap the hidden ideology in the language and reveal the relationship among language,power and ideology by analyzing the linguistic relationship.It is an approach and Halliday’s systemic functional grammar is the main theoretical tool.Recently the analysis has been widely used in news discourse.News reports appear to be objective and fair,but it is influenced by social and personal factors which hide ideologies people can hardly feel.In this thesis,30 sample news reports about the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank from China Daily and New York Times are selected,using Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional modal as the analytic framework and Halliday’s systemic functional grammar as the theoretical foundation to unveil the hidden ideology in the news reports that how language is used by news producers to influence people’s ideology.The samples will be analyzed from three perspectives: transitivity(including material process,psychological process,verbal process and relational process)and transformation system(including normalization and passivization)and modality system.Through the analysis of those samples,conclusions can be showed as follows:1.There are obvious differences in the reporting of the AIIB between China and the United States,indicating that the news coverage is not completely objective and impartial,and it is influenced by the social environment in which the person reporting and the interests of the group represented.Different ideologies can lead to different news reports.2.Since the establishment of the AIIB has had an impact on the economic position of the United States in the world,the United States opposed the AIIB when China proposed the AIIB.Through the contrastive analysis of news reports on AIIB between China Daily and New York Times,we can see: first,journalists from China and the United States use different words when reporting the same event so as to express their views and positions that represent their national attitude,and further affecting the reader’s ability to judge.Second,Halliday’s systemic functional grammar is an effective approach for analyzing news reports and is also the theoretical basis of Critical Discourse Analysis.Therefore,there are two aspects of meanings of this study.Theoretically,through the analysis of news reports on Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank from China Daily and New York Times,what can be uncovered from the news discourse analysis is that the objectivity and impartiality could not be achieved in the reporting of news discourses.On the other hand,it is of certain practical significance to analyze the linguistic characteristics of news reports from the perspective of CDA.Firstly,readers’ ability of CDA to identify news will be cultivated;secondly,it enables readers to understand the text thoroughly while reading news reports,and also to cultivate their critical thinking.