CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION

1.1 Research Background

In  a  time  span  of  only  30  years,  China  has  managed  to  overtake  Japan,  becoming world?s  second largest economy after  US. With the  flourishing  of  Chinese economy, China is more willing to present a confident and vigorous image on the global stage. In order to seize the initiative to speed up development, Chinese government aspires to  have more  say  in  rule  setting  of  global  economic  arena.  Hence  frictions  arise  as China starts to combat monopoly behavior of multinationals.

Monopoly is a  situation  in  which a single  company or group  owns all or  nearly all  of  the  market  for  a  given  type  of product  or  service.  Essentially,  monopoly  is featured by an absence of competition, which often results in high prices and inferior products.

Monopoly prevents fair competition and constitutes a hazard for market economy. The free market system just doesn?t work when there?s only one provider of a good or service  because  there?s  no incentive to innovate to  meet the demands  of  consumers. Thereby governments attempt to prevent monopolies from arising through the use of antitrust laws.

On 25, November, 2013, Qualcomm,  American global  semiconductor  company that  designs  and  markets  wireless telecommunications  products  and  services, announced  that  National  Development  and  Reform  Committee  in China  has  started antitrust  investigations  into  the  company  on  accusation  of  excessive  patent  fees imposed on mobile producers. But it was “not aware of any charge” by the regulators that it had broken the law.

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1.2 Rationale of the Study

According to Norman Fairclough (1989a:35), “media power relations are relations of a  mediated  sort  between  power holders  and  the  mass  of  the  population.  These mediated relations of power include the most fundamental relation, the class relation. The media operate as a means for the expression and reproduction of the power of the dominant class and bloc. And the mediated power of existing power-holders is also a hidden  power,  because  it?s  implicit  in  the practices  of  the  media  rather  than  being explicit.”

The hidden power of media discourse and the capacity of existing power-holders to  exercise  this  power  depend  on systematic  tendencies  in  news  reporting  and  other media  activities.  A  single  text  on  its  own  is  quite insignificant:  the  effects  of  media power are  cumulative,  working through the repetition  of  particular  ways of handling causality  and  agency,  particular  ways  of  positioning  the  reader,  and  so  forth.  Thus through the way it positions readers, for instance, media discourse is able to exercise a pervasive and  powerful  influence  in  social reproduction  because  of the very  scale  of the  modern  mass  media  and  the  extremely  high  level  of  exposure of  whole populations to a relatively homogeneous output. 

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CHAPTER TWO  LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Evolvement of Critical Discourse Analysis

In  1979,  Critical  Linguistics  emerged  when  Fowler,  Hodge  and  Kress  at  the University  of  East  Anglia  published Language  and  Control  (1979).  Critical Linguistics follower Trew (1979:155) intended to “isolate ideology in discourse” and show “how ideology and ideological processes are manifested as systems of linguistic characteristics  and processes.” Concerning  the  approach,  Critical  Linguistics Practitioners  applied  Halliday?s  Systemic  Functional  Grammar  and analytical  tools based on SFL to decode the surface structure of discourse.

As  a  mainstream  trend  in  Critical  Linguistics,  “critical  discourse  analysis”  first appeared  in  Norman  Fairclough?s Language  and  Power  (1989)  and  gradually developed  as  a  particular  field  of  study  that  has  its  own methodology.  According  to Van  Dijk  (1998:63),  “Critical  Discourse  Analysis  is  a  field  that  is  concerned  with studying  and  analyzing  written  and  spoken  texts  to  reveal  the  discursive  sources  of power, dominance, inequality and bias.”

Critical  linguistic  analysis  looks  at  the  social  conditions  and  social  structures which  determine  discourse.  Does  it parallel  to  sociolinguistics?  The  answer  is negative. According to Fowler et al. (1979), Critical Linguistics, like sociolinguistics, asserts that, “there are strong and pervasive connections between linguistic structure and social structure” (p. 185). Yet in sociolinguistics, language and society are probed separately  to  see  their  effect  on  each  other,  For CDA,  language  itself  is  a  social process.  Here  we  incorporate  the  discourse  view  of  language:  As  a  form  of social practice, language is no longer “text”, it?s called “discourse”. We investigate the micro linguistic features of discourse to analyze macro social conditions of discourse.

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2.2 Critical Discourse Analysis in the Media Discourse

News discourse is  widely  spread  public reports about recent  events.  By  virtue of its promptness,  objectivity，huge load  of  information,  media  discourse  constitutes  a window  through  which  people  see  the  world，，playing  a significant  role  in  modern society.  The  involvement  with  language  in  the  press  creates  a  novel  approach  for research on social phenomenon: Critical Discourse Analysis. 

2.2.1 The Reason for adopting Critical Discourse Analysis

From  the  perspective  of  social  criticism,  the  press  serves  as  a  civil  medium  of ideology  in  the  service  of sustaining  unequal  power  relations.  In  general,  the producers  of  news  reports  guide  public  opinion  through exercise  of  power  over consumers.  They  have  sole  producing  rights  and  can  therefore  determine  what  is included and excluded, how events are represented, and even the subject positions of their audiences. In  general, the balance of  sources and  perspectives and ideology  by producers  is  overwhelmingly  in  favor  of  existing  power holders.  “Media  power relations  are  essentially  relations  of  a  mediated  sort  between  power  holders  and  the mass of the population” (Norman Fairclough, 1989a:56).

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CHAPTER THREE   THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK .................. 15

3.1 The Present Situation of Sino-US Trade Relations................... 15

3.2 Fairclough?s Three-Dimensional Model .......... 16

CHAPTER FOUR   RESEARCH PROCEDURE ............ 31

4.1 Data Collection ............. 31

4.2 Approaches to Data Analysis................... 32

CHAPTER FIVE   CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF SELECTED DATA .......................... 35

5.1 Description ................ 35

CHAPTER FIVE  CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF SELECTED DATA

5.1 Description

At  the  stage  of  description,  we  will  use  Halliday?s  meta-functions  to  describe  the linguistic  features  of  the selected  data.  The  data  will  be  classified  into  2  categories: headlines and body for discrete treatment.

In the light of Teun A Van Dijk (1988a:76), the macrostructure of a news report as a whole must be organized by a news schema. That is, parts of the news text may have conventional functions that are used as obligatory or optional categories for its formal organization. Headlines and lead constitute the summary category of the news report. The  body of  the  text  also  exhibits  such  different  schematic  functions,  such  as  Main Events, Backgrounds, Context, History, Verbal Reactions, or Comments. Headlines as the  highest  macro-proposition  tend  to  be  expressed  first.  Therefore it usually expresses the most important topic of the news item.

Since  macrostructures  are  derived  for  or  from  a  text  on  the  basis  of  our knowledge  and  beliefs,  they  may of course  be  inter-subjective:  The  most  important information of a news event for one person or group may not be so for another. This also means that the thematic or schematic organization of a news report may well be biased, for instance when a relatively unimportant piece of information is expressed in the  headlines  or  lead  or  when  important information  is  placed  at  the  end  or  omitted altogether.  Therefore,  when  we  analyze  the  headlines,  we  are trying  to  expose  the newspapers? ideological values and attitudes.

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CHAPTER SIX CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS

6.1 Summary of Major Findings

The  event  in  question  is  Chinese  state  organ?s  investigation  of  American  IT companies Qualcomm and Microsoft. In  order  to  detect the  national  media?s attitude and  cognition  toward  it,  18  Chinese  and  18  American  news reports  are  selected  to conduct  an  comparative  analysis  from  the  linguistic  level.  After  this,  we  come  to examine the role of media discourse in the reproduction and challenge of dominance, unraveling the relations between discourse structures and power structures in Chinese and US media.

In  the  first  phase,  the  transitivity  features  of  the  headlines  and  body  parts  are examined. The headlines are mostly material processes: Chinese government takes up 54.5% as the Actor in Chinese news reports while in US reports Chinese government takes  up  70%.  And  the  process  used  shows  their  different  emphasis:  Chinese  media used mild and  softening  verbs to describe it as a routine investigation. To add to the credibility of the probe action, Circumstance and Scope are utilized for justification. In the body part, material process, relational process and verbal process are analyzed in  detail.  As  for  material  process,  different  media  expressed  contrasting  experiential meanings.  The  Chinese  party  exposed  American  enterprises?  offense  of  crime, resulting  in  economic  disorder. The  supremacy  of  law  must  be  strictly  observed  in China. But  the  American party  presented their  contribution to Chinese  economy and criticized  Chinese  government  for  discriminating  against  American  companies  for political revenge.  Next,  the  verbal  process  also  serves  differing  ends.  Chinese administration  stressed  their  procedural equity.  In  US  media,  US  government complained about Chinese explosive hostility to foreign ventures due to its policy turn. Last  the  relational  process  attributed  the  probe  to  Chinese  leader?s  autocratic management  style  in American  corpus,  degrading  Chinese  investing  environment, while  Chinese  media  rebutted  the  opinion  by highlighting  Chinas  market  economy status and the opportunities it brought about for foreign investment.

reference(omitted)