Abstract

The study focuses on the appliance of critical discourse analysis to the news reports delivered from two countries, the United States and China. Shanghai World Expo 2010, as a great event, which has a world-wide influence, attracts attention of numerous presses both at home and abroad. However, due to cross-language, cross-culture, and cross-social custom, their news reports vary a lot from many aspects, such as language usages, rhetoric applying, emotional containing, and so on. Since both presses in China and United States focus on this great event, and they are two totally different countries in almost every aspect, this dissertation will emphasize on reports from these two countries’ media, especially presses which has authority in media area.
Critical discourse analysis is a system of language analyzing method, which could be used to analyze language use in a critical way. According to Fairclough (1995), the objective of critical discourse analysis (CDA) concludes the social context of its development, the theoretical origins and intellectual background in his paper. News reports collected from New York Times and China Daily will be studied in these three aspects in the term of CDA. The different attitudes toward Shanghai Expo expressed by China Daily and New York Times will be studied in this essay with the methodologies of data collection, data comparison and research design. Through comparison between news from these two presses, it is evident to figure out the differences in the choices of adjectives, notional verbs, and themes. Then this essay will try to get a deep understanding of their different ideologies since the producers of these two news presses are born in different cultural backgrounds.

Key Words: critical discourse analysis; news discourse; ideology; lexico-grammatical features; rhetorical devices

摘要

本论文侧重于运用批评话语分析理论研究中美两国对上海世博会新闻报道。2010上海世博会作为一个重大的事件对全球产生了巨大的影响，吸引了无数中外媒体的关注。但是由于不同的语言，不同的文化，不同的社会习俗的影响，对上海世博会的报道也存在着许多的不同之处。无论是在语言运用，修辞手法，新闻偏向等方面都有着不一样的特点。中美作为两个具有完全不同性质的国家都对上海世博会做了充足的报道，本论文将以中美两国对世博会的新闻报道为对象来进行批评话语分析。
   批评话语分析是一种语言的分析手段，将话语进行批评性的分析。根据Fairclough (1995)，批评话语分析的对象包括社会环境发展，理论来源和知识背景。通过对不同对象进行分析，批评话语可以得到不同的分析结论。本文将针对《中国日报》和《纽约时报》中关于上海世博会的新闻报道进行批评话语分析。通过对上海世博会报道中表现的态度的研究分析，对相关报道搜集、做对比分析和研究，从而来对两者进行对比分析。报道中对形容词的选择，情态动词的运用和主题的定位上有着明显的差别。通过对以上方面的对比分析，从而对它们背后深层次的文化背景做进一步的探讨。由于中美之间不同的文化背景和知识熏陶，美国人往往试图证明自己的新闻报道是客观可信的，努力呈现给读者一个真实的新闻现场，而中国人讲究团结与和谐，试图通过对上海世博会美好的一面的报道，呈现给读者美好的印象，展现中国和谐的面貌。

关键词：批评话语分析；新闻话语；意识形态；词汇-语法特点；修辞手法