Output file Vietnam national university hanoi College of foreign languages and international studies Postgraduate department NGUYỄN THU TRANG A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF CNN ONLINE AND BBC ONLINE[.]
Vietnam national university hanoi College of foreign languages and international studies Postgraduate department NGUYỄN THU TRANG A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF CNN ONLINE AND BBC ONLINE NEWS ON BEIJING OLYMPICS 2008 (PHÂN TíCH DIễN NGÔN PHÊ PHáN TIN TứC TRUYềN THÔNG Về OLYMPICS BắC KINH 2008 TRÊN BáO ĐIệN Tử CNN Vµ BBC) M.A minor thesis Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15 HANOI, 2009 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i ABSTRACT ii LIST OF TABLES .iii Chapter I Introduction 1.1 Rationale of the study 1.2 Aims and objectives of the study 1.3 Scope of the study 1.4 Methods of the study 1.5 Design of the study Chapter II Theoretical background 2.1 Critical Discourse Analysis 2.1.1 What is Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)? 2.1.2 The history of CDA 2.1.3 Critical, ideology and power 2.2 A review of media news discourse studies 2.3 Systematic functional grammar and its role in CDA 10 Chapter III: A Critical Discourse Analysis of CNN Online and BBC Online News on Beijing Olympics 2008 3.1 Content and presentation analysis 15 3.1.1 Highlighted topics 15 3.1.2 The use of pictures and videos 18 3.2 Lexical analysis 20 3.2.1 Use of neutral referring expressions for the event 22 3.2.2 Use positive references to indicate the Games 22 3.3 An analysis of two sample texts 23 v 3.3.1 Syntactic structure analysis 23 3.3.1.1 The use of transitive and intransitive sentences 23 3.3.1.2 The use of active and passive voices 24 3.3.2 Cohesion 26 3.3.2.1 Conjunction 27 3.3.2.2 Reference 30 3.3.3 Transitivity 32 Chapter IV Conclusion 42 4.1 Conclusions 42 4.2 Suggestions for further study 43 REFERENCES 44 APPENDICES .I iii LIST OF TABLES Table Summary of process types (adapted from Halliday, 1994) Table 2: Topics focused in BBC online Table 3: Topics focused in CNN online Table 4: Wording of competition fields in headlines of BBC online and CNN online Table References to Olympics Beijing 2008 in BBC and CNN online Table Number of transitive and intransitive sentences in two sample texts Table Active and passive voices used in BBC and CNN texts Table Passive clauses found in the BBC article “Beijing bids farewell to Olympics” Table Passive clauses found in the CNN article “Grand spectacle closes Beijing’s Olympics” Table 10 Conjunctions used in BBC article “Beijing bids farewell to Olympics” Table 11 Conjunctions used in “Grand spectacle closes Beijing’s Olympics” of CNN Table 12 Referring words/phrases used in BBC article “Beijing bids farewell to Olympics” Table 13 Referring words/phrases used in “Grand spectacle closes Beijing’s Olympics” of CNN Table 14 Analysis of transitivity used in BBC text Table 15 Analysis of transitivity used in CNN text Table 16: Summary of transitivity analysis data Chapter I Introduction 1.1 Rationale of the study The Beijing Olympics 2008, which took place from the 8th August to 24th August 2008 in China, is one of the most successful Olympic Games which won great approval from the media world With a total of 11,468 athletes from 204 countries and regions, about 100,000 Olympic volunteers, 400,000 city volunteers, and million social volunteers, Beijing saw the largest number of female athletes competing in the history of the Games As the NBC Universal assesses, the Beijing Olympics is the most-watched U.S television event of all time More than 220 television agencies and over 25,000 journalists covered the event The IOC site logged million clicks during the entire process of the Beijing Games, whereas it logged 2.8 million clicks during the Athens Olympics More than 80 heads of states and governments participated in the opening ceremony of the Beijing Games About 80 percent of the people in China and about half of the people in the United States and Europe watched the opening ceremony on television This was a record number Few other events have received so much attention The closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics received wide coverage by most U.S media outlets, with many praising the Games as the most memorable summer Olympics It was described as "the most memorable Olympics ever." In a piece titled "Truly exceptional Games," NBC said the Beijing Olympics made history "in virtually every regard.‖ Beside, many U.S media outlets heaped praises on the Chinese volunteers at the Beijing Games; the Los Angeles Times praised the Chinese volunteers for their friendliness and efficiency BBC (The British Broadcasting Corporation) and CNN (Cable News Network) are the world's largest broadcasters which are very familiar with English users BBC has bases or correspondents in more than 200 countries and, as officially surveyed, is available to more than 274 million households, though also possibly far more individual persons and groups than surveys can gather, and it is the oldest surviving entity of its kind and is more widely known internationally than any other news organization As of June 2008, CNN is available in over 93 million U.S households Broadcast coverage extends to over 890,000 American hotel rooms, and the U.S broadcast is also shown in Canada Globally, CNN programming airs through CNN International, which can be seen by viewers in over 212 countries and territories While According to Alexa's Traffic Rank system, in July 2008 BBC Online was the 27th most popular English Language website in the world, and the 46th most popular overall, CNN.com is now one of the most popular news websites in the world Critical discourse analysis (CDA) has made the study of language into an interdisciplinary tool A great number of researchers with various backgrounds, including media criticism use it Most significantly, it offers the opportunity to adopt a social perspective in the cross-cultural study of media texts While most forms of discourse analysis "aim to provide a better understanding of socio-cultural aspects of texts," CDA "aims to provide accounts of the production, internal structure, and overall organization of texts." One crucial difference is that CDA "aims to provide a critical dimension in its theoretical and descriptive accounts of texts." With all above reasons, the author has the temptation to carry out a study named: ―A Critical Discourse Analysis of CNN Online and BBC Online News on Beijing Olympics 2008‖ 1.2 Aims and objectives of the study The study aims at: - Providing an analysis of CNN Online and BBC Online News on Beijing Olympics 2008 in the light of Critical Discourse Analysis; - Giving an illustration of CDA approach; - Raising language users as well as newspaper readers‘ awareness of the power and ideology of discourses 1.3 Scope of the study In critically analyzing CNN and BBC News on Beijing Olympics 2008, the author concentrates only on the coverage in the CNN and BBC online, not the other kinds like printed or radio news Specifically, in this study, the writer particularly examines the content and presentation of the articles, the use of word, grammar (transitive and intransitive sentences as well as active and passive voices) Besides, some cohesive devices like conjunction and reference and transitivity are also factors of concerns in the thesis 1.4 Methods of the study In order to obtain the aims of the study, the following activities will be carried out: In the first place, a literature review will be carried out to provide a theoretical background for the study Then, a number of articles on BBC online and CNN online about Beijing Olympics will be analyzed in the light of critical discourse analysis The research method applied in this part is both quantitative and qualitative The analysis will be made in terms of the content and presentation Apart from that, vocabulary, syntactic structure and cohesion are also analyzed From the analysis, a comparison between the news reported in the two newspapers will be interpreted and analyzed 1.5 Design of the study The thesis is divided into chapters: Chapter I is the Introduction which provides the rationale, the aims, the methods and the design of the study Chapter II naming Theoretical background first gives an overview of Critical Discourse Analysis In this part, the history of CDA and some aspects such as critical, ideology and power are mentioned and analyzed Then, it deals with media discourse studies and systematic functional grammar Chapter III is entitled A Critical Discourse Analysis of CNN Online and BBC Online News on Beijing Olympics 2008 This is the main focus of the thesis which provides and discusses the main findings of the study Chapter IV is the Conclusion summarizing the main findings of the study, drawing important conclusions and offers suggestions for further research Apart from these main parts, appendices and references are also included Chapter II Theoretical background 2.1 Critical Discourse Analysis 2.1.1 What is Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)? Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context With such dissident research, critical discourse analysts take explicit position, and thus want to understand, expose, and ultimately resist social inequality Some of the tenets of CDA can already be found in the critical theory of the Frankfurt School before the Second World War (Agger 1992b) Its current focus on language and discourse was initiated with the "critical linguistics" that emerged (mostly in the UK and Australia) at the end of the 1970s (Fowler et al 1979) CDA has also counterparts in "critical" developments in sociolinguistics, psychology, and the social sciences, some already dating back to the early 1970s As is the case in these neighboring disciplines, CDA may be seen as a reaction against the dominant formal (often "asocial" or "uncritical") paradigms of the 1960s and 1970s CDA is not so much a direction, school, or specialization next to the many other "approaches" in discourse studies Rather, it aims to offer a different "mode" or "perspective" of theorizing, analysis, and application throughout the whole field We may find a more or less critical perspective in such diverse areas as pragmatics, conversation analysis, narrative analysis, rhetoric, stylistics, sociolinguistics, ethnography, or media analysis, among others Crucial for critical discourse analysts is the explicit awareness of their role in society Continuing a tradition that rejects the possibility of a "value-free" science, they argue that science, and especially scholarly discourse, are inherently part of and influenced by social structure, and produced in social interaction Instead of denying or ignoring such a relation between scholarship and society, they plead that such relations be studied and accounted for in their own right, and that scholarly practices be based on such insights Theory formation, description, and explanation, also in discourse analysis, are socio-politically "situated," whether we like it or not Reflection on the role of scholars in society and the polity thus becomes an inherent part of the discourse analytical enterprise This may mean, among other things, which discourse analysts conduct researches in solidarity and cooperation with dominated groups 2.1.2 The history of CDA In the late 1970s, Critical Linguistics (CL) was developed by a group of linguists and literary theorists at the University of East Anglia (Fowler et al., 1979; Kress & Hodge, 1979) Their approach was based on Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) CL practitioners such as Trew (1979a, p 155) aimed at "isolating ideology in discourse" and showing "how ideology and ideological processes are manifested as systems of linguistic characteristics and processes." This aim was pursued by developing CL's analytical tools (Fowler et al., 1979; Fowler, 1991) based on SFL Following Halliday, these CL practitioners view language in use as simultaneously performing three functions: ideational, interpersonal, and textual functions According to Fowler (1991, p 71), and Fairclough (1995b, p 25), whereas the ideational function refers to the experience of the speakers of the world and its phenomena, the interpersonal function embodies the insertion of speakers' own attitudes and evaluations about the phenomena in question, and establishing a relationship between speakers and listeners Instrumental to these two functions is the textual function It is through the textual function of language that speakers are able to produce texts that are understood by listeners It is an enabling function connecting discourse to the co-text and con-text in which it occurs Halliday's view of language as a "social act" is central to many of CDA's practitioners (Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999; Fairclough, 1989, 1992, 1993, 1995b, 1995a; Fowler et al., 1979; Fowler, 1991; Hodge & Kress, 1979) According to Fowler et al (1979), CL, like sociolinguistics, asserts that, "there are strong and pervasive connections between linguistic structure and social structure" (p 185) However, whereas in sociolinguistics "the concepts 'language' and 'society' are divided…so that one is forced to talk of 'links between the two'", for CL "language is an integral part of social process" (Fowler et al., 1979, p 189) Another central assumption of CDA and SFL is that speakers make choices regarding vocabulary and grammar, and that these choices are consciously or unconsciously "principled and systematic"(Fowler et al., 1979, p 188) Thus choices are ideologically based According to Fowler et al (1979), the "relation between form and content is not arbitrary or conventional, but form signifies content" In sum, language is a social act and it is ideologically driven Further development of CDA Over the years CL and what recently is more frequently referred to as CDA (Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999; van Dijk, 1998a) has been further developed and broadened Recent work has raised some concerns with the earlier work in CL Among the concerns was, first, taking into consideration the role of audiences and their interpretations of discourse possibly different from that of the discourse analyst The second concern has called for broadening the scope of analysis beyond the textual, extending it to the intertextual analysis Fairclough (1995b) has raised both issues He claims that the earliest work in CL did not adequately focus on the "interpretive practices of audiences." In other words, he claims that CL has, for the most part, assumed that the audiences interpret texts the same way the analysts In a similar vein, commenting on Fowler (1991), Boyd-Barrett (1994) asserts that there is "a tendency towards the classic fallacy of attributing particular 'readings' to readers, or media 'effects,' solely on the basis of textual analysis‖ The other issue put forward by Fairclough (1995b) is that while earlier contributions in CL were very thorough in their grammatical and lexical analysis they were less attentive to the intertextual analysis of texts: "the linguistic analysis is very much focused upon clauses, with little attention to higher-level organization properties of whole texts" Despite raising these issues with regards to earlier works in CL, Fairclough (1995b) inserts that "mention of these limitations is not meant to minimize the achievement of critical linguistics they largely reflect shifts of focus and developments of theory in the past twenty years or so" The "shifts of focus and developments of theory" which Fairclough (1995b) talks about, however, have not resulted in the creation of a single theoretical framework What is known today as CDA, according to Bell & Garret (1998), "is best viewed as a shared in two stages The first, a general characterization of the newspaper discourse, reveals evidence of a systematic ‗othering' and stereotyping of the ethnic community by the ‗white' majority This is followed by a comparative analysis of two reports, which surfaces evidence of a racist ideology manifest in an asymmetrical power discourse between the (ethnic) law-breakers and the (white) law-enforcers The study concludes with a discussion to explain the evidence of `Racism in the News', which both reflects and reinforces the marginalization of recent Vietnamese migrants into Australia Different from above researchers, some other researchers take a multi-perspective view by examining both international and domestic coverage of an event For instance, in the study ―Intertextuality and national identity: discourse of national conflicts in daily newspapers in the United States and China‖, Juan Li examines the effects of intertextuality on the discursive construction of national identities in the press It does so by comparing how two daily newspapers in the United States and China employ specific discursive strategies to construct national identities and positions in their discourse of two particular events that represent moments of crisis and conflict in US—China relations Focusing on discourse, style, and genre, which are respectively associated with representational, identificational, and actionable meanings of discourse (Fairclough, 2003), this study aims to show how news texts draw on, echo, and bring together different intertextual resources realized in the forms of discourses, styles, and genres, and how the circulations and combinations of these intertextual relations in particular contexts construct specific understandings of national identities and positions Another method that gains interests from researchers is analysis of a discourse written by a well-known person Nguyen Thi Thu Ha (2004) carried out a study ―Critical discourse analysis of President Bush‘s ultimatum to President Saddam Hussein‖ The study investigates the power and ideology hidden behind the discourse of President Bush‘s ultimatum to President Saddam Hussein The analysis consists of text description, the relationship between the processes of the discourse and that between discourse processes and social processes The reviewed studies only focus on newspapers reporting political, diplomatic or social events None of them have done any researches on a sport event that draws attention from 10 all over the world as Beijing Olympics Therefore, I hope that this study will contribute to the diversification of critical discourse analysis 2.3 Systematic functional grammar and its role in CDA Systemic functional grammar (SFG) or systemic functional linguistics (SFL) is an approach to language developed by Michael Halliday in the 1960s It is part of a broad social semiotic approach to language called systemic linguistics The term "systemic" here refers to the view of language as "a network of systems, or interrelated sets of options for making meaning"; The term "functional" shows that the approach is concerned with meaning rather than word classes as formal grammar SFG is concerned primarily with the choices the grammar makes available to speakers and writers These choices relate speakers' and writers' intentions to the concrete forms of a language Traditionally the "choices" are viewed in terms of either the content or the structure of the language used In SFG, language is analyzed in three different ways (strata): semantics, phonology, and lexico-grammar SFG presents a view of language in terms of both structure (grammar) and words (lexis) The term "lexico-grammar" describes this combined approach Metafunctions As far as SFG is concerned, functional bases of grammatical phenomena are divided into three broad areas, called metafunctions: the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual Written and spoken texts can be examined with respect to each of these metafunctions in register analyses The ideational metafunction There are two types of ideational: experiential and logical metafunctions The first metafunction organizes our experience and understanding of the world It is the potential of the language to construe figures with elements (such as screen shots of a moving picture or pictures of a comic novel) and its potential to differentiate these elements into processes, the participants in these processes, and the circumstances in which the processes occur The later metafunction works above the experiential It organizes our reasoning on the basis of our experience It is the potential of the language to construe logical links between figures 11 Transitivity is a key component in the ideational metafunction It provides us with the potential to the infinite variety of occurrences into a finite set of process types including: Material, Mental, Relational, Behavioral, Verbal and Existent Process Table below summarizes these process types: Table Summary of process types Process type Material Definition Processes of doing things; express the notion that some entity ―does‖ something, which may be done ―to‖ some other entity Category meaning Participants, directly involved Example 'doing' Actor, (Goal) Action 'doing' The boy hit the dog Event 'happening' The mayor resigned Behavioral Mental: Perception Processes of (typically human) physiological and psychological behavior like breathing, coughing, dreaming, staring A kind of activity in people‘s mind, requires a conscious participant He stared at me 'behaving' 'sensing' 'seeing' Behaver, Phenomenon Senser, Phenomenon I hadn‘t noticed that 12 Affection 'feeling' The boy loved the girl Cognition 'thinking' She didn‘t believe her husband Processes of saying Verbal Relational: Sayer, Target, Recipient John told me the truth 'saying' Processes of ―being‖, ―being at‖ and ―having‖ ‗Being‘ Attribution 'attributing' Carrier, Attribute She is kindhearted Identification 'identifying' Identified, Identifier; Token, Value Tom is the leader Possession ―having‖ Possessor, I have a daughter possessed Existential Processes of ―existing‖ or ―happening‖ 'existing' Existent There was a storm The interpersonal metafunction The interpersonal metafunction relates to a text's aspects of tenor or interactivity Like field, tenor comprises three component areas: the speaker/writer persona, social distance, and relative social status Social distance and relative social status are applicable only to spoken texts Note - this is not so, looking at the text of O´Halloran we are told that we no longer have the option to contrast the various speakers but we can examine "how the individual authors present themselves to the reader", therefore, we are able to look at social distance and relative social status in texts where there is only one author 13 The speaker/writer persona concerns the stance, personalization and standing of the speaker or writer This involves looking at whether the writer or speaker has a neutral attitude, which can be seen through the use of positive or negative language Social distance means how close the speakers are, e.g how the use of nicknames shows the degree to which they are intimate Relative social status asks whether they are equal in terms of power and knowledge on a subject, for example, the relationship between a mother and child would be considered unequal Focuses here are on speech acts (e.g whether one person tends to ask questions and the other speaker tends to answer), who chooses the topic, turn management, and how capable both speakers are of evaluating the subject The textual metafunction The textual metafunction relates to mode; the internal organization and communicative nature of a text This comprises textual interactivity, spontaneity and communicative distance Textual interactivity is examined with reference to disfluencies such as hesitators, pauses and repetitions Spontaneity is determined through a focus on lexical density, grammatical complexity, coordination (how clauses are linked together) and the use of nominal groups The study of communicative distance involves looking at a text‘s cohesion—that is, how it hangs together, as well as any abstract language it uses Cohesion is analyzed in the context of lexical and grammatical as well as intonational aspects with reference to lexical chains and, in the speech register, tonality, tonicity, and tone The lexical aspect focuses on sense relations and lexical repetitions, while the grammatical aspect looks at repetition of meaning shown through reference, substitution and ellipsis, as well as the role of linking adverbials Systemic functional grammar deals with all of these areas of meaning equally within the grammatical system itself Among all this variety and heterogeneity of methods, SFL has traditionally provided the analytical tools for a large extent of critical discourse analysis since it was first developed in the decade of the 70‘s The main reason is that Halliday and functional linguistics in 14 general regard language as a societal phenomenon and thus study it in relation to its use in society (Halliday, 1994) As such, it establishes the relationship between grammatical structures of language and their context of use Thus, with such a conception of language, SFL provides the appropriate grounds for the kind of linguistic analysis the critical discourse analyst intends to carry out Systemic functional categories have been present in the analysis of CDA since its early stages in works such as Fowler, Kress, Hodge and Trew (1979), Fairclough (1989), and Fowler (1996) More recently, some authors have offered a review of works that both analytically and theoretically illustrate this CDA-SFL connection Furthermore, as Renkema (2004) has suggested, a Hallidayan approach to CDA is an attempt to carry it out in a more systematic way, so as to counter the criticism of vagueness and lack of objectivity that this discipline usually encounters Tran Huu Manh (2007) suggests at the use of the formula to generalize the total meaning of the sentence (in Vietnamese) M sent = f [St + comp (RIT)] (Tran Huu Manh 2007, p269) (Meaning of the sentence = function of [Structure (i.e semantic structure) + compositionality (Representational + Interpersonal + Textual)] He emphasizes the use of + compositionality in counting the meaning of the sentence (with added cultural values) among the total meaning of text which is very crucial to CDA in general Hence, one of the strengths of applying a SFL analysis to CDA is that its detailed and rigorous analysis of texts helps to preserve the interpretation from ideological bias In short, this chapter reviews the theories of CDA, different media news discourse studies and provides some features of systematic functional grammar and its role in CDA This creates a background for the main part of the study that is chapter III 15 Chapter III: A Critical Discourse Analysis of CNN Online and BBC Online News on Beijing Olympics 2008 3.1 Content and presentation analysis 3.1.1 Highlighted topics In this part, the author investigates the focused topics found in both BBC and CNN online Table and table illustrate these topics Table 2: Topics focused in BBC online No Topics Results Medals table Olympics map Team Great Britain 29 Competition sports: archery, athletics, badminton, baseball, basketball, boxing, canoeing, cycling, diving, equestrian, fencing, football, gymnastics, handball, hockey, judo, modern pentathlon, rowing, sailing, shooting, softball, swimming, table tennis, taekwondo, tennis, triathlon, volleyball, weightlifting, wrestling Paralympics Six athletes heading to the Games despite huge obstacles 16 Table 3: Topics focused in BBC and CNN online No Topics and subtopics Schedules and results (by sport and by date) Athletes (by name, by nation, by sport); Medal tracker (2008 totals, historic totals) SI photos (photo galleries, photos by sport) Daily highlights Everyday people preparing for the 2008 Summer Games Monetary issue Olympic social, cultural calendar From above tables, it can be pointed out that both two newspapers focus on the results, the medals awarded, the successful athletes and development of sport competition fields On BBC online, readers can also find information on Team Great Britain and Paralympics while on CNN there are clear parts providing updated news about SI photos, logistics issues such as everyday people preparing for the 2008 Summer Games, and monetary issue as well as the host nation and the list of athletes In addition, on the front page on the Olympic Games, both e-newspapers highlight the closing ceremony of the Olympics Games; and many have videos on the Games Regarding competition fields, BBC have a greater number of headlines than CNN This does not include articles on schedule and results of the games From table 4, it can be seen that all the headlines examined in the two newspapers are short and clear Most of the headlines highlight medal winner athletes as well as medal winner countries ... of media news discourse studies 2.3 Systematic functional grammar and its role in CDA 10 Chapter III: A Critical Discourse Analysis of CNN Online and BBC Online News on Beijing. .. dimension in its theoretical and descriptive accounts of texts." With all above reasons, the author has the temptation to carry out a study named: ? ?A Critical Discourse Analysis of CNN Online and BBC. .. headlines of BBC online and CNN online Table References to Olympics Beijing 2008 in BBC and CNN online Table Number of transitive and intransitive sentences in two sample texts Table Active and