The Research of Contemporary Critical Discourse Analysis 英语专业毕业论文.doc

the research of contemporary critical discourse analysis1. introductioncritical discourse analysis, also called critical linguistics, critical language study or linguistics criticism, it was proposed in 1979 by hodge, fowler, trew kress, et al in the book language and power.critical linguistics has nearly 20 years history. it is on the philosophical basis of frankfurt schools western marxist, and it is a branch of western critical theory in linguistics respect. critical linguistics is based on the theory of edward sapir and benjamin lee whorfs language related theory and language determinism”, and hallidays systemic-functional grammar (sfg) theory. it is one of the main tasks of critical linguistics to reveal the relationship between ideology and language, with appropriate linguistics theory analyzing public discourse. halliday called it as autonomous linguistics which is outside instrumental linguistics”. its status has universally acknowledged by linguistics schools.the research of contemporary critical discourse analysis was developed in the late 1970s from critical linguistics, which was mainly created by britain and australia. in 1991, the term critical linguistic was compiled into crystals dictionary of linguistics and phonetics, and it was explained in detail by malmkjaer in linguistics encyclopedia. at present, more and more scholars are applying cda to study news reports, especially political news reports, for example, kou jies critical discourse analysis of political news reports in american and british newspapers and hilary jankss critical discourse analysis as a research tool. there are also some scholars analyzing sino-us relation by study economic news reports with cda, but until now, no scholars study reports about hus state visit to us with cda.2literature reviewcritical discourse analysis (cda), as a method of discourse analysis, develops rapidly since it was proposed. however, it doesnt have its own specialized theories or framework. although the schools about cda are various, they have an identical goal- to expose the ideologys influence to utterances, the utterances counteractive to ideology, and how the two elements root in and serve the social structure and power relation.2.1 previous and present studies on critical discourse analysis at home and abroadin the past 20 years, more and more people begin to study critical discourse analysis. in 1993, the magazine discourse and society edited by van dijk published critical discourse analysis special”. such writings on this aspect still has a lot more, for instance, ideology: a multidisciplinary research (van dijk, 1998), discourse and social changes (fairclough, 1992), critical consciousness of language (fairclough, 1992), critical discourse analysis (fairclough, 1995) and linguistics criticism (fowler, 1996), etc. all these suggest that critical discourse analysis, as a new trend of discourse analysis, has been accepted by western countries to some extent. however, in china, it is a completely new field, there are not so many the articles and books on this aspect. basically have xinbins language, power and ideologies: criticism linguistics, rustic opinion of english discourses critical analysis, critical analysis of news discourses reported speech and methodology of critical discourse analysis, chen zhonghua et als commentary on critical discourse analysis, ding jianxin et als commentary on critical discourse analysis, dai huihua et als criticism discourse analysis: theory commentary and example analysis.2.2 significance of present studythis paper, which begins with news reports about hus state visit to us and which is combined with the current critical linguistics tools, will analyze the characteristics of political news reports, and then will further discuss the attitude of the world media on sino-us relationship development, the development of china-us relations and its development trend.2.3 features of news reportsjournalistic english is one of the most widely used literature forms. news reports require efficiency, so news writing should be simple and brief. journalistic english has some distinctive word features from other writings. almost all terms or jargons are adopted by news reports or news comments, such as technology, sports, military and other terms. in order to expand the publicity, to attract as many readers as possible and to report all the events which happen in society, journalistic english has to create new words, borrow foreign words, seek slangs and figurative terms, therefore, journalistic words were developed. news is socially constructed. as fowler (1991:4) has pointed out, news is a representation of the world in language and news is a representation in this sense of construction; it is not a value-free reflection of facts. roger fowler (1979) argued that news is a practice, a product of the social and political world. he said that the content of news report was not facts about the world, but in a very general sense ideas, beliefs, values, positions, or ideologies. by discussing the role of linguistic structures in the construction of ideas in news coverage, he concluded that language was not neutral, but a highly constructive mediator. generally speaking, each news report is made up of three parts: headline, lead and news body. the following will give a simple introduction of each part.2.3.1 headline headline plays a very important role in news reports. it should be the most attractive part of the whole passage. as is known to all, people usually read newspapers roughly, and most of the newspaper readers tend to just grab the main idea of the whole passage, so the words appear in the headline should be simple, figurative and attractive enough to draw the readers attention, so that the readers can read the passage further. another feature of headline lies in its sentence structure. often, the headline is a very brief sentence, or even it is not a complete sentence, the common feature is that the tense is not complicated.2.3.2 leadthe lead part of a news report is of great importance. generally speaking, a good lead should summarize the six essential elements of news - 5w1h, that is who - the leading role of the eventwhat - the eventwhen - the time of the eventwhere - the place of eventwhy - the cause of the eventhow - the way that the event happenedto achieve this goal, lead is usually written in the form of long sentences, which are not recommended in general english writing. more information is accommodated at the expense of the simplicity of the syntax. thats why long sentences are frequently seen in the lead part of news report. 2.3.3 news resourcein the past decades of years, china daily, 21st century - have been the main english news resource of the most english researchers and learners in china. these newspapers follow the traditions of english news reports, offer fairly international reports to the readers according to real-world experience. nowadays, the development of internet opened another door for the readers, and it brought them into a wider circle of the english news media world.2.3.4 linguistic featuresjournalistic english has the following linguistic features.first, news reporters are always trying to use fewer words to report more facts and more knowledge, so the sentences of news reports are mostly long. usually, there is only one long sentence in one paragraph. sometimes, the reporter may not arrange the sentence in a correct way as he thinks of something new adding to the text in a rush. this may make the readers feel confused. of course, this kind of sentences can be very few.second, most of the sentences are continuous tense. in journalistic english, the actions are written as if it were happening, aiming to give the sense of freshness to the readers. in everyday english, simple present or present progressive is usually used to show behaviors or actions that will happen in the future, and so it is in journalistic english. therefore, when we do some journalistic english reading, we should not mix the things will happen with the thing is happening.third, most sentences of journalistic english are simple sentence and in active tense. active tense gives readers a sense of directness, and it makes the discourse unquestionable, and easily makes the newspaper readers agree with the reporter. that is how the ideology works. at the same time, to describe the facts clearly and give the readers a clear line in a short time, the reporter use simple sentence frequently, constantly using simple sentences can help newspaper readers understand the development of the events. sometimes, to express clearly, the reporter often expand the simple sentence with attribute, adverbial and appositive.fourth, many quotations were used in journalistic english. this is because quotations can keep the reports maximum objectiveness, for quotations make readers believe that the reporter is just and that he doesnt give his own opinions. discourse representation is an important part of the news. however, this is also a category that often influenced by ideology. quotations include direct speech and indirect speech. direct speech means quoting the original intact words and the words will be put with quotation marks, thus, it seems that direct speech can not be used to control ones mind; indirect speech means stating others words from the reporters own understanding and the words will not be put with quotation marks, thus, the indirect speech can be easily used. actually, both of them can be make use of to express his political and cultural beliefs.in information age, reading english newspaper is one of the main channels to get information. therefore, it is very valuable and of significance to study the linguistic feature of journalistic english.3theoretical framework3.1 ideology in cdaideology is not wrong ideas in peoples mind, but a neutral word which means the sum of ways in which people both live and represent to themselves their relationship to the conditions of the existence(fowler), or the fundamental social cognitions that reflect the basic aim, interests and values of groups(van dijk, 1993 ). ideology widely exists in daily life and it has been naturalized, therefore it has become peoples habit, and gradually become non-ideological common senses. critical discourse analysis aims to make these common senses unfamiliar, so that the relationship between power and discourse will be revealed and evaluated.krishna said: a discourse bears and imposes an ideology, and every ideology finds its discourse. one can then understand why every dominant class pays particular attention to the practice of language and controls its forms and the means of its distribution: the news, the press and literature. one can understand why a dominant class has its favorite languages, its literature, its press, its orators, and why it tends to censor any other language.3.2 faircloughs modelthe goal of critical discourse analysis is to analyze the relationships among language, authority and ideology. according to fairclough, any discourse is a three-dimensional concept, namely, composed of the text, the discourse practice and social practice. this view is shown in the pictures below.the above chart shows that discourse is the product of discourse practice” in which process the discourse generation, dissemination and acceptation” are included. all of these are determined by specific social practice conditions. thus, discourse analysis should be three-dimensional, that is, to treat language as the main body, give linguistic description on the discourse, explain the mutual relations between the generative process of discourse and text, and the relations between the discourse and social process.3.3 systemic functional grammarthe main theoretical basis and method of the view mentioned above about critical discourse analysis come from hallidays systemic-functional linguistics, but also other linguistic theories are absorbed, such as speech act theory etc. fowler, et al, point out that when carrying out the critical analysis on discourse, special attention should be paid to inspect the ideological implication of the transitivity, modality, conversion, classification and coherence, etc. in the latter half of 20th century, the systemic-functional linguistics school, which is represented by halliday, seems very prominent among the numerous language schools. systemic-functional linguistics includes “systemic grammar” and “functional grammar”, and hallidays functional ideas mainly focus on his idea of metafunction. the nature of language determines the peoples requirements on language, that is a essential function for language. halliday reduced these daedal fuctions to three abstract metafunction of language: ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function. in the discourse analysis, we can relate a certain kind of linguistic form and process with the three functions. 3.3.1 ideational function ideational function refers to the expressions of humans various experiences in the world by language. the transitive system is one of the important systems, and its function is to express what people do, see, and hear in the real world into various processes, and designate the participants and environmental ingredients of the processes. transitivity system includes six processes: material process, psychological process, relational process, behavioral process, verbal process and existential process.3.3.2 interpersonal function interpersonal function is mainly made up of two functions: one is expressing relationships, the other is expressing identity. interpersonal function involves the social identity of journalists, readers and the reported in the news and their relationships and the mutual interactions of discourse.this section analysis is focused on two points: one is mood, one is the communicational control.3.3.3 textual function hallidays third metafunction is textual function. this function involves the foregrounding and backgrounding of information, whether the information is rheme or theme, known or unknown, and the problem of textual cohesion and coherence, etc. discourse representation is an important part of news and representing the words of those who have news value is also a category often influenced by ideology. discourse reappearance has a variety of ways. roughly speaking, there are two big distinctions of direct speech and indirect speech. theme-rheme structure is a subordinate system of discourse function. halliday thinks that theme-rheme structure and information structure is different. the speaker can utilize the potentialties provided by the context and reach his communicational purpose by the adjustment of theme-rheme structure and information structure. the speaker can also make the informations forgrounding and backgrounding through the choice of voice.3.4 the relationship between systemic-functional grammar (sfg) and critical discourse analysis (cda)sfg has long been regarded as an effective approach to do cda researchas mentioned in the literature review there is not lust one school of cda but many approaches to critical discourse analysis, such as van dijks social-cognitive approach, wodaks discourse historical approach and faircloughs language and discourse approach. among all these approaches, faircloughs approaches based on sfl have been crucial to cda. sfl, which is multifunctional, well adapted for text analysis and concerned with relating language to social context (martin, 2000: 275) has been found a congenial theory for cda and has been adapted as analytical tools by many cda practioners.to show clearly the connection between the three multifunctions and the essence of critical discourse analysis, the author tries to put forward the following connection and explanation as well as the table of three metafunctions: the ideational function一the representation of experience and the world knowledge and belief the interpersonal function一the social interaction between participants in discourse social relations and identitiesthe textual function一how the text is organized by language cda mainly discusses the construction of the text that is, how the text is organized and the features of the discourse. also the participants in discourse are analyzed in the social context so that the social interaction and relation can be registered and the ideology can be exposed. seen from the interpersonal and textual functions, the sfg taken as the main tool for the critical discourse analysis, is appropriate. as for the ideational function, it deals with the author as well as the audiences knowledge and belief, which concerns about the production of the text. seen from the above, we can know that there is a close connection between sfl and cda and some tenets in sfl can be adapted as the analytical tools. according to this, this thesis selects sfl as the theoretical and analytical tools so as to analyze the economic news better and more clearly.4. research methodology4.1 research questions based on the hallidays systemic-functional grammar for cda and faircloughs model, using the qualitative and quantitative method, the thesis aimed at answering the following three questions:(1) is there power and ideology behind the discourses?(2) what are the similarities and differences in linguistics characteristics between the american media and chinese media towards the hus state visit to america?(3) what are the causes of these similarities and differences in these news discourses?(4) what is the chinese image shown in both american newspaper and chinese newspaper?(5) there are many reports on hu jintaos state visit to ameri