A Critical Discourse Analysis of News

Abstract： This paper aims to explore the underlying ideologies as wel1 as the relationship between news discourse and ideology by ana1yzing a news report from the perspective of critica1 discourse analysis．While making the ana1ysis， this paper studies the detai1 s of 1inguistic features，transitivity, moda1ity and thematic choice which are based on the three metafunctions of language proposed by Ha11iday in systemic-functiona1 grammar， so as to revea1 how news discourse is used by powerful groups to reinforce dominant ideologies， and to gain profound insight s about the stance and attitude maintained in news reports．

Key words： Critica1 discourse analysis; news discourse; Metafunction

1.            Introduction

Critical discourse analysis, a recent school of discourse analysis，concerns itself with ideological construction，relations of power and inequality in language. From the very beginning of the CDA media discourse, especially news reports, is one of the main domains of study．Most CDA practitioners conduct some research related to media discourse although the methods they use may be different. News is generally believed to be presented as the unbiased recording of reality. However, this viewpoint has been chal1enged by the people in the field of mass communication, sociology and linguistics, especially by those people who study critical discourse analysis. For them, news is not always a representation of reality but a reflection of ideology. This paper conducts a preliminary study on the analysis of political news discourse in CDA approach and tries to explore the underlying ideologies as well as the relationship between news discourse and ideology．

2. The reason of CDA approach to news analysis

Critical discourse analysis has increasingly become the standard approach to the analysis of news reports. This approach centers on the social and ideological aspects of language. Its goal is to denaturalize ideologies that have been naturalized and to “make transparent the structural relationships of dominance, discrimination, power and control as manifested in language.”  

In CDA, the focus is on the relations of language in use to its social and historical conditions. News discourse are specific kinds of language use and of social practice “framed” by institution, with rules, conventions and positions of agents. Thus news discourse analysis addresses social problems and power relations and is even a form of social action itself.

3. Halliday’s systematic-functional grammar as the analytical tool

CDA has indebted a lot to SFG developed by M.A.K. Halliday. In his introduction to Functional Grammar (1985), Halliday developed a theory of the fundamental functions of language, in which he analyzed lexicogrammar into three broad metafunctions: ideational, interpersonal and textual. Each of the three metafunctions is about a different aspect of the world, and is concerned with a different mode of meaning of clauses. Ideational function, according to Halliday, is about the experience that people use language to talk about the external world, things, events, qualities or the internal world. Interpersonal function accounts for the aspect of function that people communicate with each other to build and maintain a good interpersonal relationship through the use of language. Textual function deals with the organization of the whole text to enable the realization of the ideational and the interpersonal functions. In the following parts, the three metafunctions of Halliday’s grammar will be elaborated one by one.

4. Practical analysis of news report from the perspective of functional grammar

This part will concentrate on practical analysis of a piece of news about Saddam Hussein’s capture from the New York Times. The author would like to apply the linguistics tools of three metafunctions of Systemic-functional grammar to describe the formal properties of the news report, focusing on the linguistic features of transitivity, modality and thematic choices.

4.1 Transitivity

Transitivity is the main element of Hallidat’s category of the ideational function and is at the core of representation. According to Halliday, the transitivity system is concerned with the transmission of ideas and construes the world of experience into a manageable set of process types. According to whether they represent actions, events, states of mind or simply states of being, Halliday identifies six types of process: material process, mental process, relational process, behavioral process, verbal process, and existential process. There is often a choice between different grammatical processes and participant types, and the selection that is made can be ideologically significant.

From the statistics of transitivity in the news report, we find that material, relational and verbal processes are the most commonly used processes in these three new samples. The mental, behavioral and existential processes count little in the three news samples. Therefore a detailed analysis of the processes will only focus on verbal process, material processes and relational processes.

4.1.1 Material process

The first process type to be studied is the material process. The semantic definition of a material process is that some entity is doing something, or undertakes some action. Material processes have two inherent participants roles associated with them：actor (or agent)， an obligatory element which represents the ‘doer’ of the process expressed by the clause; and an optional goal which represents the person or the entity affected by the process. The main purpose of analyzing material processes is to uncover who is represented as the most powerful participants in the text．

In the news, the participants in the agent position are scattered. American soldiers, American officials, the Governing Council members, Iraqi council, Iraqi political leaders, Iraqi people and Saddam Hussein all appear in the actor place. However, on further study, we see that Saddam as Actor takes a dominant proportion among all actors. Below are two examples:

 As a fugitive, Mr Hussein had issued several recorded message taunting the people

     Actor      material process

Who cooperated with the American-led occupation, calling them traitors and urging Iraqis to kill foreign soldiers and their own government officials alike.

During his reign, Mr. Hussein subjected his country to three wars, first against Iran.

      Actor      material process

then to invade Kuwait an d finally, in March, against the American -led invasion．

By describing Saddam Hussein in the agent position, the reporter tries to tel1 the reader that Saddam Hussein is doing something. He taunts the people who cooperated with the American—led occupation and he subjects his country to wars. So his capture is not only go d to Americans but also to Iraqis．

4.1.2 Relational process

Relational processes encode the meaning of ‘being’. Relational processes are used to describe and explicitly categorize the participants in the text. Below are some relational processes in the news：

For the Bush administrati0n, which has been struggling to stabi1ize Iraq， the capture of Mr. Hussein was the most triumphal moment since American forces ousted him．

But for many Iraqis, the sight of Mr. Hussein, even in custody, also serves as a reminder of the painful years lived under him an d his Baath Party, which came to power in a coup in 1968.

Relational processes can transfer an occasional action into a stable or even permanent state. From these relational processes about Saddam Hussein in the news report we know that what the reporter wants to express is that Saddam Hussein is a brutal leader who does not bring Iraqi people happiness an d peace but war and disaster. His capture is not only triumphant movement for U.S., but also a relief for Iraq.

4.1.3 Verbal Process

Verbal processes are those referring to all those actions that are about saying something (promising, talking, and warning). Analysis of the verbal process is very important in news discourse because newspapers tend to provide a large amount copy of what others have said. They rely heavily on verbal actions and verbal processes for their operation. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate verbal processed and see who gets to hold the floor and to have their words reported, what kinds of effects the Sayer might have on those listening.

When examining verbal processes in the news, we divide the Sayers into four groups: Iraq ( a general word including any participants relate to Iraq in the verbal process except Saddam and his supporters who will be classified independently, e.g. top officials in Iraq, Iraq court officials, Iraq people and some other participants which can be representatives of Iraq); the US ( including the president Bush, the General and other top us officials); Saddam Hussein and his supporters ( including Saddam’s senior aids who has also been convinced, Saddam’s lawyers and other followers ) and others ( including those Sayers from other countries or whose identities cannot be classified). We do not include Saddam Hussein and his followers in the group of Iraq because Saddam seems to become the enemy of most Iraqis after he was being caught.

In the news, the one who gets heard and reported most is the US. Saddam Hussein and his supporters have no say. The reason is that the news is about the capture of Saddam Hussein, which has been considered as a great victory of the US after Iraq war. The news report is presented from the perspective of American side. The Sayers are mainly American officials. They tell the readers where and how Saddam is captured.

4.2 Modality

Modality is the most effective means of interpersonal function. The analysis of modality is important to critical news analysis, as modality is a tool of expressing the “attitude” or “comment” of the speaker or writer. It is through modality that news reporters express their recognition or negation with the statements of others or present their comments on the event or the people involved.

Modality can be realized by modal operators, certain adjectives, adverbs, certain verb and even tense and personal pronouns to express the viewpoints or attitudes of information sources. In this paper, we focus on the analysis of modal operators since they are the most common forms of realizing modality in news discourse.

From the distribution of modal operators in the news, we find that all the modal operators used those of low and median values occur evenly. There is no occurrence of high value modal operators in the news. This may mean that commitments made to utterances are either moderate or weak. News reports are supposed to exert influence on readers in a naturalized way other than providing information. The most frequently used modal operators if median and low value conveys a probability and compromised certainty in the reporters’ judgment and prediction of the events. The news of Saddam Hussein’s capture is very sudden. A lot of people do not believe that Saddam Hussein can be captured so easily. People do not know how the US and Iraq will deal with Saddam Hussein and whether his arrest will undermine the insurgency against the American-led forces in Iraq and bring peace and stability in Iraq. By giving a compromised certainty, the reporter leaves space for their predictions to be modified or even overthrown by further development of the events. This is a technique to defend the objectivity of news reporting.

4.3 Thematic choice

Theme is the first constituent of the clause. Theme is one of the most important notions in the textual aspect and the selection of theme can reflect the assumptions of the speaker or the writer. Different choices of the theme can give insight into commonsense assumption. What tends to be selected as the departure point implies the ideological attitudes of the speaker or writer. In news report, thematic choices can emphasize what the news text is mainly about and make certain participants prominent and thus suppress other participants.

From the thematic analysis, we find that American officials and their equivalent occupy most of the topical thematic position. This thematic foregrounding of American officials is ideological motivated to enhance the status and significance of them in the capture of Saddam Hussein and to show that the capture of Saddam Hussein is a great moment and symbolic victory for America.

5. Conclusion

Based on Halliday’s functional grammar, a critical analysis of a news report about the capture of Saddam Hussein id conducted in this paper. The analysis focuses on transitivity, modality and thematic choice. After carrying out the analysis, we find that no matter how objective and authentic the news report is claimed to be, ideology is inevitably concealed in it. In an effort of conducting a critical interpretation of news discourse, the paper provides a possibility for readers to cultivate critical language awareness so that the individual will be able to read carefully in order to discount the bias and see through to the world.