A Critical Discourse Analysis Of The British And American News Reports On Trump’s Visit To China

As a new discipline of modern linguistics,Critical Discourse Analysis is an interdisciplinary study which focuses on social issues.Critical Discourse Analysis has emerged in the UK since the 1980s,and it is mostly used to study the official discourse and personal discourse.Among them,the most common is to analyze the new discourses for revealing how the media influences the readers through discourse,and then,exploring the relationship between discourse,ideology and power.At present,domestic stuhies on news reports have covered society,economy,politics and military.Among them,the studies on the relations between major powers often focus on revealing Sino-US relations,or the relations between Western countries and China,furthermore,it pays little attention to British-American relations.In the existing studies,China is the direct participating country in the event,while UK and US are non-participating countries,so there lacks of studies on the event that UK and US are direct participating countries.Therefore,this thesis selects the news report of Trump’s visit to China as the research object,in order to enrich the domestic studies on Critical Discourse Analysis.Based on the Critical Discourse Analysis,this thesis will analyze the news reports of the British and American media about Trump’s visit to China.The samples come from the authoritative news media of the two countries,the Reuters and Associated Press,and cover the entire period of Trump’s visit to China.This thesis will use Fairclough’s Three-Dimensional Model as the theoretical framework,and the three meta-language functions of Halliday’s Systemic-Functional Grammar as analysis tools to make a CDA study on the British and American news reports on Trump’s visit to China,for revealing the hidden ideology and power trhough under its linguistic features.In the description,lexical choice and transitivity are analzyed for revealing the surface features of discourse.In lexical choice,Reuters focuses on using positive words to express China’s warm welcome to Trump,and Trump’s affirmation to China’s positive attitude in the cooperation;while the Associated Press weakenes the efforts China made during Trump’s visit to China with neutral and negative words.In transitivity,both newspapers mainly used material and verbal process.Reuters decribes more on China’s friendly attitude to cooperation,while the Associated Press emphasizes Trump’s contribution and China’s negative behaviors in cooperation.In the interpretation,the relationship between text and discourse practice are revealed.In modality,it is found that both newspapaers choose more modal verbs with low values,but the meanings expressed in the reports were not same.As a non-participating country,Reuters chooses modal verbs woth low values to evaluate the cooperation between China and US,in order to avoid offending any countries;the Associated Press establishes a strong image for US by using modal verbs with low values.In reporting speech,Reuters uses direct speech to increase the credibility of the friendly cooperation between the two countries.The Associated Press preferres to use indirect sppech to highlight Trump’s contributions to the agreements.In the explanation,it reveals the relationship between discourse and context.By analyzing the social background of Trump’s visit to China,it is found that social background has a significant influence on the ideology and discourse of news reports.As the Sino-British cooperation deepens continuously,the potential contradictions between UK and US have gradually emerge,which affect their special relationship.In thematic structure,both newpapers mainly choose the unmarked theme,but chose the marked theme to transmit the information that can not be spoken directly.The results shows that even if the two countries report the same event,the attitudes and attentions of two sides are completely different.The British media focuses on the friendly cooperation between the two sides,while the American media emphasizes Trump’s contributions to achieving the cooperation with ignoring China’s efforts.It indicates that the news reports seemed objetively are also affected by the hidden ideology and power.Influenced by ideology and government attitudes,the British and American media report different contents,and convey their ideology by manipulating lexical choice,transitivity,modality,and reporting speech,and influence the readers’ minds subtly,furthermore,achieve the purpose of controling the readers.Therefore,readers should maintain critical minds when reading news,and recognize the ideology and power behind the discourse.