A Contrastive Study Of News Reports On China’s Belt And Road Initiative From China Daily And The New York Times Under The Critical Discourse Analysis Perspective

News discourse has always been one of the key areas of critical discourse analysis(CDA)which has attracted the attention of many linguists.CDA mainly studies the relationship among language,power and ideology,and the ideology of news writers is often hidden behind news discourse.Since 2013,when President Xi first proposed “the Belt and Road”(B&R),B&R initiative has attracted great attention both at home and abroad.This study collected 60 news reports about B&R initiative between the Chinese and US mainstream newspapers,30 of which were from China Daily and the other 30 from The New York Times.Based on the three-dimensional model(TDM)of Fairclough,this study uses some linguistic tools of Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar(SFG)to analyze the selected news discourse,and makes a comparative study from the perspective of CDA,with the aim of revealing the ideological differences between the two countries and further analyzing the reasons for the differences.The data analysis of this study is carried out in three stages: the first stage is text analysis(description),mainly analyzing the lexical choice,transitivity and modality of news discourse;the second stage is discourse practice analysis(interpretation),mainly analyzing the modes of news reporting and the news sources;the third stage is social practice analysis(explanation),mainly explaining the reasons of embedding different ideologies in the two newspapers from the political,economic and cultural perspectives.The study finds that the Chinese newspaper has always been actively promoting the construction of B&R initiative while the US newspaper is skeptical of B&R initiative.Its objection has been reflected in The New York Times through many linguistic tools.The ideological differences between China and the United States can be explained by political,economic and cultural factors.The significance of this study mainly has three points.First of all,this study broadens the perspectives of B&R initiative’s academic research,and enriches the application of CDA.Secondly,this study give suggestions to domestic media on how to enhance the discourse power,that is by making better use of linguistic tools to create a positive image of China,so as to help the great realization of B&R initiative.Finally,this study reminds readers to use critical thinking to read news reports and grasp the truth.