Literature Review

Since this paper employs the corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA thereafter) as the analytical framework, it is of huge necessity to review studies of CDA on news discourse, as well as studies of CDA from corpus linguistics perspective. Hence, this chapter aims to expound previous studies on critical discourse analysis in news discourse and then the previous studies of CDA in the scope of the corpus linguistics by scholars home and abroad.

Studies of Critical Discourse Analysis on News Discourse

News is never a value-free reflection of the reality (Flower, 1991). In other words, news inevitably gives only a partial version of the world, since they select, reorder, transform, distort and suppress the truth (Flower, 1979). Critical discourse analysts of newspapers thereby use various analytical methods to unveil the ideologies and power relations embedded in the discourse.

Studies Abroad

The term of “critical linguistics” is first put forward by Fowler in his book Language and Control in 1979, in which Hallidayrsquo;s Systemic Functional Linguistic is employed in critical discourse analysis on news (Fowler et al., 1979). Then the framework of CDA is used in analyzing specific news text in his book Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press (1991). The later one adds more details in linguistic analytical tools, such as vocabulary classification, transitivity, coherence, modality, reporting mode, and transformation.

In the 1980s, Van Dijk, another distinguished scholar of CDA, proposes the socio-cognitive model to carry out discourse analysis in the view of discourse-cognition- society triangle. His CDA research on media discourse mainly concerns the structures and processes of news and also the reproduction of racism, sexism, and the abuse of power in his Prejudice in Discourse (1984).

Norman Fairclough makes considerable contribution to CDA with his Three-Dimension Model in CDA in research on news discourse. He takes the view that news discourse should be studied through the textual, discursive and social practice (Faiclough, 1989). In book Media Discourse, Fairclough introduces new framework in media discourse analysis and claims that media language should be regarded as an important element in contemporary study of social and cultural change (Fairclough, 1995).

Given the analytical tools introduced above, an increasing number of news discourse analysis is conducted then in various topics with the proliferating development of mass media and technology. The ideology in news discourse is always laid great importance. In a general sense, ideology is defined as common beliefs and assumptions of a determinate group; or it can also be defined in a narrow sense of specific frameworks of meaning which serve to underpin relations of power in a certain socio-historical circumstances (Ken Hylan amp; Brian Paltridge, 2011). Starting point can be the title of newspapers, which is attached with its own, political biased, editorial line in readershipsrsquo; assumptions. Patriarchal ideology, or the ideological construction of gender is also found through the linguistic choices in the transitivity system of newspaper discourse. Take for instance, Kate Clark finds that the Sun newspaper highlights particular kinds of linguistic patterning that attempt to shift the blame from the male perpetrator to his female victim (Toolan, 1992). Besides that, another body of work examines the relationship between the news discourse and professional ideology. Bellrsquo;s work on discourse studies how narrative operates differently in the news story than in every life (Bell, 1991).

Studies at Home

CDA study is introduced in China with the first journal article “A Survey of Critical Linguistics” in Foreign Language Teaching and Research written by Chen Zhongzhu in 1995. Then Chen employs the analytical frame proposed by critical linguists in analyzing two pieces of news reports about the British coal minerrsquo;s strikes and demonstrates how grammar, social relation and textual structure are utilized to control the power and ideology.

As one of the most eminent and productive critical discourse analysts, Xin Bin (1996) not only gives detailed summarization of the development and the analytical methodology of CDA, but also conducts a considerable number of empirical CDA researches. In the article entitled Critical Linguistics and Critical Analysis of English News (2000), he intends to introduce the general methodology of critical linguistics, especially on English news. His book Critical Linguistics: Theory and Application (2005) offers a comprehensive overview of the relationship between the language and the ideology, power relation, and the analytical tools of CDA involving classification, transitivity, transformation, etc. and also the application of them in English news discourse analysis.

Likewise, there have been a great majority of articles reviewing the development and methodologies of CDA such as Liao Yiqing (1999, 2000), Wu Jiangang (2002), Tian Hailong (2006) and Zhi Yongbi(2007).