Critical Discourse Analysis Of News Reports On The Left-behind Children From The Perspective Of Register Theory

As a socially-committed research approach,Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA for short),which is correlated to theories of Systemic-functional Grammar proposed by Halliday,mainly exploits relationships among language,ideology and power through linguistic analysis so as to help readers raise the critical language awareness of public discourses about social problems.In recent years,the problem of left-behind children is more prominent in Chinese society.This group who lives in the bottom of society is voiceless and has few opportunities to make their inner voices heard.This issue has drawn extensive attention of the central government.However,only minimal research has been undertaken on this topic from the perspective of CDA.Ideologically laden newsprint media texts operate as vague and implicit vessels of power relations.Therefore,this thesis conducts the critical discourse analysis of 42 news articles randomly selected from Guangming Daily over the past fourteen years from 2004 to 2017 by applying analytical methods in terms of field,tenor and mode in order to deconstruct taken-for-granted ideologies and implicit power relations through one of the most influential and reputable news media in China by resolving the following questions.1.What are the focus and social activities in the left-behind children news reports by the field variable?2.How are the power relations and standpoint embedded in the left-behind children news reports by the tenor variable?3.What ideologies are reflected in the left-behind children new reports by the mode variable?Based on the quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis,this thesis encompasses above questions and the major findings can be drawn as follows:In response to the first question,field of discourse is concerned with social activities,which is conducive to grasping the focus of news reports from fourperspectives,respectively topics,identities of participants,circumstances in the news discourses.Social care occupies the largest proportions among all topics,which constructs the harmonious atmosphere for these vulnerable children in the entire society.Besides,selections of different grammatical processes and participants types implicitly represent the trace of ideological orientations.Material process and relational process are predominant in the headlines and in the news text blocks.The former tends to facts that social activities are sponsored for left-behind children;the latter expresses the further identification of their social attributes.Namely,these children belong to social vulnerable group and have few opportunities for self-representation in China.Social identities of participants vary from national level to individual.Policymakers provide macro guidance for local institutions.School education plays an important role in the formation and development of values for teenagers.Therefore,these two main participants assume more social responsibilities for solving this social problem.Circumstances mainly focus on the place and time of news events.Time and location of news reports about left-behind children vary greatly.All these ideologically motivated linguistic choices highlight or background the problem of left-behind children in China.With represent to the second question,tenor of discourse is concerned with the interpersonal relationship between participants,which exposes underlying power relations and standpoint embedded in the left-behind news discourses from three angles,respectively power,solidarity and affect.The implicit subjective modality occupies the greatest proportion.Newsgivers encode the news by combing personal opinions with other propositions in order to avoid giving voice to something directly.High modal values,such as“????????”,convey that writers take a tough line on related policies in that existing power-holders implicitly embody the powerful requirements for“consumers”of policies and indirectly motivate the down-to-earth spirit of policy implementation.Besides,Gugangming Daily is the tongue of the government.Except for dominance and power,the purpose of journalists is to detach themselves from responsibilities for what is being reported by dialogic expansion.Such linguistic forms shorten the interpersonal distance between writers and readersand weaken the hegemony of existing power-holders and constitute the alliance and integration of different social groups in terms of social effects of national policies for left-behind children.In addition,negative affects spread the whole discourse,which indirectly gives this group a label of“trouble-makers”or“problem-children”by the media.These stigmatized representations powerfully lead to orientations of the public opinion field and widely arouse the sympathy of the public.In regard to the third question,mode of discourse refers to what ways that speakers are expecting language to do for them in terms of speech reporting and various images in news.The indirect speech occurs frequently than direct speech.It is inevitable to impose readers' voices when they transform speeches of speakers and it is accustomed for Chinese to express opinions implicitly.The reporting verbs with high modality and most news sources reflect the authority and strong power of central government and top leaders with high social status.Besides,non-linguistic factors play a vial role in reflecting ideologies.From the horizontal perspective,the number of text blocks on the right side is more than those on the left side.From the vertical perspective,text blocks located on the top of pages take up a high proportion.In addition,semiotic modes of news photographs,the placement of news discourses signifies the powerful government and highlights the information focus and attracts readers' attentions.Equality and people-oriented ideology in Chinese society can be revealed from all of these important parameters.In conclusion,the fundamental goal of this thesis is to make the public to rationally recognize the left-behind children and to strengthen news readers' critical sensibility and awareness so as to endeavor to tackle it with all might from various aspects in the whole society.