Critical Discourse Analysis Of News Reports On Brexit Bvybritish Newspapers

Critical discourse analysis(CDA),which emerged in the 1980 s,is a multi-dimensional theoretical framework for discourse analysis.Based on Halliday's systemic functional grammar,CDA aims to reveal ideological meanings embedded in the linguistic structures of discourses,and to explore ideology,power relations and the relationship between language and ideology by means of analyzing linguistic features,linguistic structures from micro perspective and examining the social-historical background of discourses from macro perspective.CDA mainly investigates the interaction between ideology and discourse,which means how discourse reflects the control and influence of ideology,how ideology influences the linguistic structures of discourse and how ideology and discourse are produced in the society and serve for certain power relations.As the medium of spreading ideologies in modern society,mass media is taken to be an important research object for CDA.By means of network,television and radio,mass media hide many ideologies of ruling class and imposes great influence on people's thinking.Therefore,CDA is an important tool to study the ideological influence of mass media.The main purposes of the study are threefold.Firstly,the present study aims to explore the similarities and differences of linguistic structures in news reports between the two different British newspapers,and to probe for the influence of ideology on linguistic structures in news discourse.Secondly,the images of European Union and the British government portrayed respectively by the two British newspapers are investigated to study the ideological differences between these newspapers.Thirdly,the present study examines how mass media exert ideological influence on people and thus helps people improve their critical awareness on information obtained from mass media.The present study selects 15-month news reports on Brexit by The Guardian and Daily Mail from June 2016 to August 2017.These news reports are chosen randomly in each month within a range from two to five days.Each newspaper selectsthirty-five pieces of news reports respectively,and the total number of the sample news is seventy.This study mainly adopts Thompson's methodological framework of depth hermeneutics as a guiding framework,and uses comparative analysis,quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis to carry out the research from three procedures.Firstly,this thesis examines the specific social conditions and social background in which news discourses are produced,circulated and accepted,and explores how ideology is produced in certain social context in the stage of social-historical analysis.Secondly,the thesis makes a detailed description on the linguistic features and linguistic structures of the selected data from the aspects of lexical classification,transitivity,modality,reported speech and news sources to reveal how reporters of the two newspapers conceal their ideologies through linguistic structures at the stage of discursive analysis,which is based on Halliday's systemic functional grammar.Thirdly,the present study synthesizes all the analysis of the data based on social-historical analysis and discursive analysis and interprets the ideological differences between the two newspapers.This study shows that there are remarkable differences between the images of European Union and the British government respectively shaped by the two British newspapers.In the news reports in The Guardian,negative words are often used to depict the Event of Brexit.The image of European Union is depicted as a strong protector of Britain,while the British government is described as an autocratic and blind leader who does not consider the risks.In the news reports of Daily Mail,positive words are used to depict the event.European Union is portrayed as a crafty plotter,while the British government is described as a democratic and free government who respects people's willingness and choices.These two different newspapers have represented different group's ideologies and interests.The reporters of The Guardian tend to represent the standpoint of the middle class and businessmen,and support Britain to stay in the EU due to economic interests,while the reporters of Daily Mail who adhere to imperialism support British people and government's decision of exiting from the EU.Through the analysis of the similarities and differences of the linguistic features of the two newspapers,it can be found out thereare great differences between two groups of reporters' ideologies.The reporters of The Guardian have a higher recognition on their European identity than those of Daily Mail do.The latter tends to maintain their national identity and refuses to be European citizens.The present study also points out that Brexit,as a major political event,provides an important perspective to study the relationship between Britain and the European Union.It is understandable that The Guardian and Daily Mail have been fiercely competing as news media,but both two groups of reporters should think about minimizing the negative effects of prejudice and avoid misleading the public political views.Instead of using previous general methods of CDA,this thesis adopts Thompson's theoretical framework to study and interpret the ideology in news discourse.The selected data is about the latest international political news.It can be proved that Thompson's methodological framework of depth hermeneutics is feasible in studying ideology through this research.Through the analysis of news reports on Brexit by two different British media,it is possible to find out the root causes of this political news event and provide readers different perspectives to interpret this event.