A Critical Discourse Analysis Of News Reports On The 40th Anniversary Of Reform And Opening Up In Chinese And American Media

Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA)is an analytical method in the field of discourse analysis,originated from Critical Linguistics(CL).It examines the value orientation and ideology hidden behind the language by analyzing the linguistic features of discourse and the social historical background behind language,aiming to reveal the relationship between language,ideology and power.As a public discourse,news discourse should objectively and fairly report the news events,reflect objective facts,and accurately convey information.However,the objectivity of news reports is not absolute.It is always influenced by the value orientation and ideology of journalists and the social context in which news events occur,thus implying the media's views and standpoints on relevant news reports.This thesis selects 25 pieces of relevant news reports on the 40 th anniversary of China's reform and opening up as the research data from China Daily and The New York Times.Based on the theory of Fairclough's three-dimensional model and Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar,the thesis focuses on the critical discourse analysis to the news reports in virtue of qualitative and quantitative research methods aiming to explore how Chinese and American media transmit their own ideologies by language,and further explain the deep reasons which result in the differences of language choice by analyzing the selected discourses from three perspectives: text description,discourse practice interpretation and social practice explanation.In terms of text description,classification and modality are explored to describe the linguistic features;As for discourse practice interpretation,news source and reporting mode that influence the reliability of news reports are studied;In social practice explanation aspect,the reasons behind linguistic choice in text description and discourse practice interpretation are explained through the discussion of institutional context and social context.Based on the above analysis,the relations among discourse,ideology and power are revealed.The thesis demonstrates that Chinese and American media illustrate their own stances by employing different linguistic forms.China Daily mostly picks the positive and neutral words to directly and objectively describe the achievements made in the 40 years' reform and opening up,its contribution to the world and its unwavering confidence to the reform and opening up in the new era.It holds a positive attitude towards the 40 years' reform and opening up.While The New York Times mostly employs subjective words that contains derogatory and biased meanings to express the skeptical attitude towards China's 40 years of reform and opening-up,and there are some obvious misunderstandings and wrong recognition about it in American media.The different attitudes of the two media to the 40 th anniversary of reform and opening up are determined by the different political positions and economic systems of Chinese and American governments.Therefore,when reading news,readers should improve their critical reading ability,and treat news reports from various countries with a correct and objective attitude.Furthermore,in the second language teaching,teachers should attach more importance to the cultivation and improvement of students' critical awareness,and help students to develop a more objective and profound understanding of the materials they learn in the cultural and social context.