A Critical Analysis Of News Discourse Of Sino-US Trade War In The New York Times Based On Fairclough's Three-dimensional Model

The Trump Administration in 2017 launched a 301 survey of China's intellectual property,technology and innovation.Consequently,the U.S.government has implemented three rounds of tariffs on Chinese products,initiating the trade war between the two countries.Responding to the Trump Administration,China planned new tariffs on U.S.goods.The two countries are reluctant to give in to each other,which intensifies the trade war.As a result,reports on the trade war are endless.News report usually plays a guiding role for readers.However,under the special political and economic system and sociocultural background,the news report cannot be absolutely objective.The New York Times is one of the mainstream media in U.S.The analysis of its news discourses on the trade war can help to reveal the attitude of the mainstream media in the U.S.towards the trade war.Based upon Fairclough's three-dimensional model and Halliday's SFG,this study conducts a critical analysis of twenty pieces of news reports on China's tariff actions on the United States,collected from The New York Times from 2018 to 2019.The present study attempts to answer the following research questions: What are the linguistic features in terms of lexical classification,transitivity and modality in the news reports on Sino-US trade war from The New York Times? How are the news discourses on Sino-US trade war interpreted in terms of intertextuality? What are the social factors that affect the production and interpretation of the news discourses on Sino-US trade war from The New York Times? The thesis employs Fairclough's three-dimensional model as the approach and framework,which involves three stages: description,interpretation and explanation.Description stage is concerned with formal properties of news texts,carried out by the analysis of classification,transitivity and modality in SFG.At the interpretation stage,news discourse is treated as a type of discursive practice.Discourse representation,as a form of intertextuality,contributes to the interpretation of the news discourses.Explanation stage deals with social factors that affect the relations between discursive process and social practice at three levels: situational,institutional and social context.Based on the analysis of the three stages,this paper comes to some conclusions.At the description stage,it shows that the use of language in the news texts is not arbitrary,and it is dominated by the medium.In virtue of lexical classification,the medium uses tendentious naming of the Chinese media and negative words to represent China as a centralized and undesirable country.The descriptive analysis of transitivity of clauses shows that material process is mostly used in clauses in news reports,followed by the verbal process;and the proportion of behavioral process is the smallest.The options of types of clause and the positioning of participants in the clauses enable the medium to construct a negative image of China.In terms of modality,the medium uses high or low modal verbs to express its attitude towards the events related to the trade war.The interpretation stage examines two aspects of discourse representation: source and mode.As for source,the medium relies more on specific sources than semi-specific.However,semi-specific sources still make up over thirty percent.The medium uses this type of source to present a negative image of China.At the same time,however,it negatively affects the authenticity of the news.The analysis of mode of discourse representation reveals that indirect discourse and direct discourse are mostly used in the samples.Indirect discourse and preset direct discourse both provide the reporters with opportunities to incorporate their own ideas into others' voices.The explanation stage uncovers that the options made in the process of news reports production can be affected by the tension and balance of the power relation between U.S.and China in the trade war.What's more,the institution's favor of the American interest,the American hegemony and the advocacy of force also affect the linguistic stance in the news reports.To sum up,this study enriches the research scope of critical discourse analysis by critically analyzing the news reports on Sino-US trade war.It also helps readers better understand the underlying ideologies in the news reports and take more objective and rational attitude when reading the news reports on the trade war between the two countries.