Abstract
Critical Discourse Analysis is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of discourse regarding language as a form of social practice. As a specific discourse, news discourse is a representation of the journalists’ expression and construction of events, as well as readers’ understanding and cognition of the events reported. It functions as a carrier that transmits ideologies and social values. Recently, news reports on the trade conflicts between China and the US has been the focus of world attention. A study of news reports on Sino-US trade conflicts with Critical Discourse Analysis approach helps interpret the relation between language use and social contexts and reveal ideological significance and power struggle in language. Twenty pieces of news reports on China’s tariff actions on the United States, collected from The New York Times from 2018 to 2019 are studied and the result shows that the use of language in the news texts is not arbitrary, but rather dominated by the medium. The options of lexical expressions in news, the selection of clause types and the position of participants enable the medium to construct a negative image of China and to define China as an unfavorable country. The reasons deciding the language use in this discourse are the tension and balance of the power relation between the U.S. and China in the trade war, and the institution’s favor of the American interest, the American political hegemony and the advocacy of force.
Highlights
Critical discourse Analysis (CDA) is an approach applied to a wide range of discourses to investigate the relation among discourse, ideology and power in sociocultural contexts
Discourse analysis will be carried out in terms of three dimensions: description, interpretation and explanation, with a view to answer the three specific research questions: 1) What are the linguistic features in the news reports on Sino-US trade war from The New York Times? 2) How are these news reports interpreted in terms of intertextuality? 3) What are the social factors affecting the production and interpretation of these news reports?
Since this paper is to explore the medium’s attitude towards the Chinese side in the trade war, the authors collect the news reports on the tariff measures taken by China in response to the United States
Summary
Critical discourse Analysis (CDA) is an approach applied to a wide range of discourses to investigate the relation among discourse, ideology and power in sociocultural contexts. As one such specific discourse, news reports has always adhered to the objectivity of news, yet it is inevitable for news reporters to convey ideologies of a particular social group, generating impacts on readers’ cognition and value. Vol 13, No 10; 2020 news reports on The New York Times within CDA framework with a view to learning about how language is used to produce the media discourses and revealing the medium’s attitudes toward the trade war and its social ideologies behind the discourses
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