A Contrastive Analysis Of The Transitivity Of China Daily And CNN Reports On Trump's State Visit To China--A Critical Discourse Analysis Perspective

In the over 40 years since its emergence,critical discourse analysis(CDA)has always taken public discourses as the key research objective,one of which is news discourse.Transitivity analysis is an important part of CDA,aiming to reveal the hidden social ideology behind the discourse by analyzing different processes of clauses in the news.At the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping,US President Donald trump arrived in Beijing on the afternoon of November 8,2017 for a two-day state visit to China.In this context,this paper samples 56 English news reports of the state visit in China Daily and CNN as the research corpus to conduct a contrastive analysis of the transitivity in the news based on the theory of transitivity in Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar,so as to describe and contrast the overall distributional features of material process,verbal process,relational process,mental process,existential process and behavioral process in Chinese and American news media.Then,through qualitative analysis,the thesis works to make clear the emphases,attitudes as well as the hidden ideologies behind the news texts.The findings show that China Daily and CNN share some general distributional features in terms of the six process types mentioned above.Among them,the number of material processes is the largest,followed by verbal process and relational process,while the numbers of mental process,existential process and behavioral process are relatively smaller.This distributional tendency is in line with the basic rule followed by news agencies that news should reproduce news facts as objectively as possible.However,there still exist many disparities between the two sides as to the focus of reports and their attitudes towards relevant events during trump's visit.These differences are implied from the choice of transitivity.The Chinese side focuses on the positive outlook:China's warm reception,the positive feedback from President Trump and the business agreements signed by the two sides all indicate that China-US relations will develop in a healthy and positive direction.The US,however,focuses on the trade conflicts and affirms that China is deliberately flattering Mr.Trump for its own benefit.At the same time,by creating and emphasizing a strong and rising China image,CNN warns the United States to be alert to the threat of China to its international status.The interpretation of these attitudes is not straightforward though:Both news media choose neutral and emotionless words in material and verbal processes,and words expressing emotion in mental processes are often used in combination with verbal clauses which means both China Daily and CNN choose to borrow others' opinions to express their own attitudes indirectly and implicitly.In addition,as Geis(1987:10)says,"the most important power of mass media is that they can decide which event is important in some period and whose voice can be heard in the event.",the choices themselves are not impartial.In terms of reporting subjects,China Daily tries to achieve a balance between the two sides,with China accounting for almost half of the "Speaker" in verbal processes and half of the "Actor" in material processes and the United States for the other half.CNN,on the other hand,focuses its coverage on the United States,with much less reproduction of the facts and reporting on voices from China.Through the comparative analysis of the transitivity of the news reports in China Daily and CNN,this paper intends to interpret news discourses more profoundly and thoroughly,improve readers' sensitivity to critical reading and reveal the complex relationship between discourse,power and ideology.