A Critical Discourse Analysis Of New Media Discourse On Chinese News Reports Of China-Australia Relations

With the flourishing of new media technology,new media research has attracted great attention,including the exploration of new media discourse.New media discourse widely exists in people's daily life and communication,and increasingly becomes a new paradigm of information dissemination.Its carriers can include search engines,online newspapers,various websites,mobile phone books,blogs,mobile phone microblogs and so on(Kuang Wenbo,2012).Scholars at home and abroad have studied new media discourse from various perspectives and achieved fruitful achievements(Akkaya,2014;Bouvier,2015;Lipizzi et al.,2016;Starkey & Ye,2017;Ding Hegen,2004;Lu,2015;etc.).However,the study of new media discourse from the perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA)to explore the reflections of ideologies in discourse need to be further expanded and deepened.This paper intends to investigate the new media discourse on Chinese news reports of China-Australia relations from the perspective of CDA.Through stratified random sampling,12 target discourses were selected from REFERENCE NEWS,the official website of PEOPLE'S NETWORK and HUANQIU NETWORK'S PUBLIC ACCOUNT for qualitative analysis.The study takes Fairclough's THREE-DIMENSIONAL MODEL as basic theoretical framework.It contains three analytical procedures: description,interpretation and explanation.At the description level,five discursive strategies(2009)of Wodak's Discourse-Historical Analysis(DHA)is utilized to analyze the employment and distribution of discursive strategies in the target discourse.At the interpretation level,the formal superstructure(1988)of van Dijk's news discourse is used to analyze the discourse structure of the target discourse.At the explanation level,five aspects in the Conflict Theory(1989)are firstly applied to analyze the causes of the fluctuations of China-Australia relations;then Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions Theory(2010)is utilized to further explain the target discourse.Through the above analysis,the study aims at exploring the interaction of social context,language forms and ideologies.Through qualitative analysis,it is found that: FIRSTLY,the application of the nomination strategy falls into three major items and thirteen classifications,among which the discourse nomination realized by social actors is rich and varied;the predication strategy analysis shows that attitudes of discourse is distinct,presenting either positive or negative;the argumentation strategy involves fifteen topos and two fallacies.The topos of usefulness,danger and threat,responsibility,burden,fact,numbers and history are frequently utilized;the perspectivization strategy includes six realizations.However,direct speech,indirect speech and free indirect speech are very common in the process of discursive construction;the mitigation and intensification strategy demonstrates their respective functions in the target discourse.But the epistemic and deontic status of utterances are realized mainly throughintensification.SECONDLY,the target discourse generally presents single structure and embedded structure.There are new categories in the formal superstructure of the target discourse,such as Acts,Article Reprint Instructions and so on.Compared with traditional news reports,the categorical boundaries in the formal superstructure of the target discourse are vague.However,their organization is much more flexible and diverse.The target discourse has broke the structural paradigm of traditional news reports to a certain extent,showing a tendency of fragmented and multi-perspective presentation.THIRDLY,the fundamental reasons for the fluctuations of China-Australia relations are related to five aspects,mainly rooted in the different demands of interests among countries.According to Hofstede's theory,the similarity of Chinese and Australian societies in the target discourse is manifested by the one-sidedness of discourse connotation and singularity of discourse purpose;while social differences are reflected by the tendency of naming social actors,the distinct attitudes and stances,the frequency use of topos,various quotations and intensification.Discursive strategies and formal superstructure of the target discourse interact with each other.They are constrained by social culture but in turn reflect ideologies at the same time.Through the analysis of the target discourse,the study first proves the applicability of Fairclough's Three-Dimensional Model in analyzing new media discourse;secondly,it demonstrates the ideological characteristics of new media discourse;thirdly,it proves the explanatory strength of the combination of the Conflict Theory and Hofstede's theory in explaining the social-cultural aspect of the discourse;therefore,the current study can be utilized for reference in following research.There are six chapters in the current study.Chapter one introduces the research background,objectives,significance and layout of the study.Chapter two introduces the definitions of new media,clarifies the research focus of China-Australian relations,and reviews the relevant literature at home and abroad.Chapter three explains the theoretical framework of the study in detail.Chapter four deals with the research method of the thesis,including research questions,data collection and analytical procedures comprehensively.Chapter five presents and discusses the analytical results of the target discourse.Chapter six is the conclusion of the research.It summarizes the main findings and limitations of the study,and points out implications as well as suggestions for future research.