3.1  Fairclough’s Three-Dimensional Model 4

3.2  Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar 5

4  A Critical Discourse Analysis of Chinese and American News Reports on Obama   Winning the Election in 2012 6

4.1  Political News Report Samples 6

4.2  Data Analysis 7

4.3  Inspirations 11

Conclusion 13

Acknowledgements 15

Bibliography 16

1 Introduction

1.1 Research Background

News is the window through which people know about the world around them, and usually people tend to focus on the information that news provides. However, news is not only the records of happenings, as Fowler argues that “newspaper coverage of world events is not like what it is presented as the unbiased and fair recording of hard facts”, when presenting the news events, reporters also make comments and express their attitudes towards the events, and as regards political issues, the language can imply one’s political orientation. News is, to a certain extent, a social and cultural practice. “From a broader perspective, it reflects, and in return shapes the prevailing values of a society in a particular historical context”(Fowler, 1991：161—178). To sum up, news shapes and influences people’s values and beliefs by making them believe its authenticity and accept its viewpoints.论文网

“Critical discourse analysis is a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context. With such dissident research, critical discourse analysts take explicit position, and thus want to understand, expose ,and ultimately resist social inequality”(Van Dijk, 1985：56—61)

The present study aims at answering the following questions. First, how and in what aspects does language manifest its intervention in the society? Second, how do social, historical and political factors influence the choice of language? Third, is the language in news as objective as it claims? If not, how to read between lines and reveal the concealed views and attitudes in news reports? Fourth, how do American and Chinese media differ in their language use, what can be reflected through those differences? Last, is the analytical framework of CDA really applicable in analyzing power and ideology in news discourse? 

1.2 Methodology 

The thesis is conducted within the framework of Fairclough’s three-dimensional model, i.e. description of the news data, interpretation of discursive practice and explanation of social practice.

By analyzing the news data from different perspectives, we should investigate the two countries’ different social, cultural and institutional contexts to reveal the deep discrepancy of the two different ideologies.来.自/吹冰论|文-网www.chuibin.com/

1.3 Outline of the Thesis

The present thesis consists of five parts. Part One makes an introduction to the thesis: research background, methodology and data collection, also the outline is made in this part. Part Two is literature review: the definition of news discourse, the news media bias, and the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Part Three lays out the theoretical basis for the research, i.e. Fairclough’s three-dimensional model. Part Four conducts a comparative critical discourse analysis of People’s Daily and New York Times’ Reports on Obama’s winning the re-election in 2012. Part Five draws a conclusion of the research: research findings and limitations are summarized; implications and suggestions are proposed for further study.