| Critical Discourse Analysis(hereafter CDA),which is a branch of modern linguistic research,first emerged in UK in the 1970 s.CDA aims to study social phenomena,which in fact highlights the power relations and ideological processes ignored by people in language.Generally,the aim of CDA is to reveal its implicit ideology and power relations through discourse.In recent years,CDA has focused its research on critical news articles,such as political events,international economy,global environment,racial and ethnic discrimination,and so on.“The Belt and Road(hereafter B&R)” is short for the silk road economic belt and the21 st century maritime silk road.Since the initiative was formally proposed by President Xi Jinping in 2013,“B&R” has attracted worldwide attention.Among them,China Daily and The Washington Post are more prominent.In this thesis,Fairclough’s three-dimensional model is cited as the research theoretical framework;at the same time,Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar is used as an analytical tool.Also,this thesis employs the research method of combining both qualitative and quantitative analysis to compare Chinese and American reports on the “B&R” in order to reveal the language strategies adopted by Chinese and American media,and further explore the hidden ideologies behind different sociocultural environment,and how those ideologies are produced and demonstrated.The data for this thesis are extracted from China Daily(English edition)and The Washington Post within a fixed time period,which is from April 2016 to October 2018.All together,20 articles were selected,and 10 articles for each medium.The selected texts of the two media correspond to each other in terms of time period,news report contents and article length.Based on the study on CDA theories and the analysis of 20 reports about “B&R”,three findings are listed as following:Firstly,there are certain similarities in the use of material,relational,verbal and mental processes at both China Daily and The Washington Post.On the other hand,they distinguish between material processes and verbal processes in percentage.Although China Daily and The Washington Post both have material processes and verbal processes accounting for a large proportion,the percentage of each corpus varies greatly.The theme selection and intertextuality is also exploring how to build and spread about the “B&R” and important channel of potential news discourse of ideology.Both corpus have the same theme structure,and unmarked themes dominate.Still,they have different priorities.As for the intertextuality,the study finds that the surveyed corpus uses different news resources to express their position.In the description of the same event,the selection of different transitivity processes has important cultural,political and ideological significance.The main reason for the difference lies in the different power organizations behind the two media.When the The Washington Post describes “B&R”,it deliberately highlights the negative effects of “B&R”.Secondly,China Daily pays more attention to the voice of the Chinese central government and the prospects for international cooperation,while The Washington Post chooses to make other voices,especially the voices of political parties and vested interests.Both media interpret their own values and political positions through the control and use of language.The mainstream media in the United States deliberately distorted the “B&R”strategy into an imagination of “threat” and “expansion” by using different language strategies.By analyzing the social relations and international status of China and the United States,the underlying ideology behind news reporting is dissected.From the perspective of The Washington Post,its views and values serve the United States government.As is known to all,the coverage of mass media is subject to national interests and policies to a great extent.In the United States,a distinctive feature of media coverage of international news is that it shares the government’s views on international policies.The Washington Post’s coverage of “B&R” was no exception.The route covered by China’s “B&R”strategy overlaps with the United States’ strategy of returning to the Asia-pacific to some extent.No matter in the field of economic cooperation or international political cooperation,China’s “B&R” strategy will exert some influence on the hegemony of the United States.Therefore,the United States uses media to question and even oppose “B&R”.Anotherimportant point is that the difference in social system and viewpoints will also lead to the difference in ideology behind the mainstream media in the two countries.Thirdly,both media use language strategies to control or guide readers to imagine events in the way the news reporter expects.They indoctrinate ideologies from the following points: lexical choice,transitivity,modality,theme selection,news source,reporting modes and many other language strategies. |
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