Abstract
This article probes into the lexical choice of six pieces of news reporting three safety accidents in China in China Daily and The Washing Post . By analyzing the difference of the word choice and verbal messages, the article aims to reveal the hidden ideologies in the news discourse covertly implied and unbeknownst to the readers. Guided by assumptions of critical discourse analysis and drawing on the framework of lexical classification in Halliday’s (1994) systemic-functional grammar, the study finds that the seemingly impersonal, objective news reports are not neutral at all; rather, they encode ideologies to exert influence on readers’ view towards the world. The article demonstrates how the two newspapers represented the same event in vastly different ways through the particular uses of lexicon that reflected their differing ideological standpoints and national interests.
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