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 và bbc

Postgraduate department NGUYỄN THU TRANG A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF CNN ONLINE AND BBC ONLINE NEWS ON BEIJING OLYMPICS 2008 PH¢N TÝCH DIÔN NG¤N PH£ PH¸N TIN TøC TRUYÒN TH¤NG VÒ

Postgraduate department

NGUYỄN THU TRANG

A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF CNN ONLINE AND BBC ONLINE NEWS

ON BEIJING OLYMPICS 2008 (PH¢N TÝCH DIÔN NG¤N PH£ PH¸N TIN TøC

TRUYÒN TH¤NG VÒ OLYMPICS B¾C KINH 2008

TR£N B¸O §IÖN Tö CNN Vµ BBC)

M.A minor thesis

Field: English Linguistics

Code: 60 22 15

HANOI, 2009

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i

ABSTRACT ii

LIST OF TABLES iii

Chapter I Introduction 1

1.1 Rationale of the study 1

1.2 Aims and objectives of the study 2

1.3 Scope of the study 2

1.4 Methods of the study 3

1.5 Design of the study 3

Chapter II Theoretical background

2.1 Critical Discourse Analysis 4

2.1.1 What is Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)? 4

2.1.2 The history of CDA 5

2.1.3 Critical, ideology and power 7

2.2 A review of media news discourse studies 8

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

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

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 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 5 References to Olympics Beijing 2008 in BBC and CNN online

Table 6 Number of transitive and intransitive sentences in two sample texts

Table 7 Active and passive voices used in BBC and CNN texts

Table 8 Passive clauses found in the BBC article “Beijing bids farewell to Olympics” Table 9 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 1 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 5 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 4 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 do 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

perspective encompassing a range of approaches rather than as just one school" Also, van Dijk (1998a) tells us that CDA "is not a specific direction of research" hence "it does not have a unitary theoretical framework." But, van Dijk (1998a) asserts, "given the common perspective and the general aims of CDA, we may also find overall conceptual and theoretical frameworks that are closely related."

2.1.3 Critical, ideology and power

In order to have better knowledge of CDA as a new linguistic approach, some core notions, such as ―Critical‖, ―ideology‖ and ―power‖ should be mentioned

According to Fairclough, ―Critical is used in the special sense of aiming to show up connections may be hidden from people – such as the connections between language, power and ideology referred above them.‖

In Ruth Wodak‘s opinion, however, ―Critical‖ is understood as having distance to the data, embedding the data in the social, taking a political stance explicitly, and a focus on self-reflection as scholars doing research

―Ideology‖ is among the most controversial concepts For Thompson, ideology refers to social forms and processes within which, and by means of which, symbolic forms circulate

in the social world The study of ideology is, therefore, a study of ―the ways in which meaning is constructed and conveyed by symbolic forms of various kinds‖

According to Simpson, ideology is ―a mosaic of cultural assumptions, political beliefs and institutional practices

Kress (1990) stresses that the defined and delimited set of statements that constitute a discourse are themselves expressive of, and organized by a specific ideology Language, therefore, can never appear by itself – it always appears as the representative of a system of linguistic terms, which themselves reflect the prevailing discursive and ideological systems

For CDA, language is not powerful on its own – it gains power by the use powerful people make of it

Ruth Wodak states that: “Power is about relations of difference, and particularly about the

effects of differences in social structures The constant unity of language and other social

matters ensures that language is entwined in social power in a number of ways: language indexes power, expresses power, is involved where there is contention over and a challenge to power Power does not derive from language, but language can be used to challenge power, to subvert it, to alter distributions of power in the short and long term.”

2.2 A review of media news discourse studies

The undeniable power of the media has inspired many critical studies in many disciplines: linguistics, semiotics, pragmatics, and discourse studies Concerning media news discourse studies, Teun van Dijk has a made great contributions In his work ―Structures of News in the Press‖, Van Dijk proposes an analytical framework for the structures of news discourse

in the press He focuses on the global organization of news that is he dealed only with news structures beyond the sentence level, such as thematic and schematic structure, and ignored syntactic, semantic, stylistic or rhetorical features of sentences and sentential connections Similarly, he also neglects issues of graphical organization, such as lay-out, and nonverbal properties of news, such as photographs In other words, he is concerned with macro phenomena, rather than with the micro-organization of news discourse Finally, he limits the discussion to news in the daily press, and do not analyze TV- and radio news

Many researchers analyze critical discourse in various newspapers‘ reports of a wide range

of social issues in different languages Craig and Lee (1992), for example, study how US newspaper report labor issues in South Korea and Poland with a view to discerning the ideological framework of US international political reportage with a textual analysis The study indicates that while in the dispute of South Korea, US mainstream newspapers does not focus on the issue and the demands of strikers, US newspapers provide readers on its front page with breaking news about the strikes to the ‗crisis‖ of the whole Polish system Other researchers examine the way different newspapers report about particular political, diplomatic or social issues of countries

Peter Teo (2000) focuses on news reports relating to a Vietnamese gang in Australia whose violent and drug-dealing activities have received publicity in two Sydney-based newspapers: The Sydney Morning Herald and The Daily Telegraph The analysis of these reports adheres to the analytic paradigm of Critical Discourse Analysis and is undertaken

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 ofnational identities in the press It does so by comparing howtwo 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 momentsof crisis and conflict in US—China relations Focusing on discourse,

style, and genre, which are respectively associatedwith representational, identificational, and actionable meanings of discourse (Fairclough, 2003), this study aims to show hownews texts draw on, echo, and bring together different intertextualresources 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

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

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 1 below summarizes these process types:

Table 1 Summary of process types

meaning

Participants, directly involved

Example

1 Material

Processes of doing things; express the notion that some entity

―does‖ something, which may be done

―to‖ some other entity

'sensing' Senser,

Phenomenon

that

Affection 'feeling' The boy loved

the girl

believe her husband

4 Verbal

Processes of saying

'saying'

Sayer, Target, Recipient

John told me the truth

5 Relational: Processes of ―being‖,

―being at‖ and

Identifier;

Token, Value

Tom is the leader

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

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

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

Chapter III: A Critical Discourse Analysis of CNN Online and

BBC Online News on Beijing Olympics 2008

3.1 Content and presentation analysis

4 Team Great Britain

5 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

6 Paralympics

7 Six athletes heading to the Games despite huge obstacles

Table 3: Topics focused in BBC and CNN online

1 Schedules and results (by sport and by date)

2 Athletes (by name, by nation, by sport);

3 Medal tracker (2008 totals, historic totals)

4 SI photos (photo galleries, photos by sport)

5 Daily highlights

6 Everyday people preparing for the 2008 Summer Games

7 Monetary issue

8 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

Table 4: Wording of competition fields in headlines of BBC online and CNN online

Federer and Nadal make last eight Federer and Williams sisters crash out

Nadal to face Gonzalez in final Federer, Nadal and Djokovic cruise through

US star regain basketball gold Spanish Olympic basketball team in 'racist'

photo row

China pick up seventh diving gold Host nation maintain diving dominance

Phelps breaks Olympic gold record Endorsements pure gold for Phelps

Collins leaves UK athletic post UK sprinter fails in bid to beat Beijing ban

Frodeno claims gold as Brits fade 'Blade Runner' keeps Olympic hope alive

Lin cruises to badminton success Olympic swimmer wouldn't let cancer dash his

dream

Phelps wins historic eighth gold Phelps on course with third gold medal

Bolt grabs third gold and record Bolt and Powell primed for 100 meters clash

Nadal beats Gonzalez to take gold Top seed Nadal overpowers Troicki

Spitz takes mountain biking gold Absalon and Spitz claim mountain bike glory

Russia claim surprise relay gold Bolt helps Jamaica smash world relay record

Snowsill storms to triathlon gold Australia wins gold, bronze in women's triathlon

Argentina brave heat to take gold Five-a-side: The 'beautiful game' at the Games

Closely examining the headlines, it is noted that both media agencies sometimes use positive words (adjectives, nouns and verbs) to judge While BBC uses the words

―cruises‖, ―storms‖, ―brave‖, ―historic‖, ―surprise‖, CNN prefers ―top seed‖, ―smash‖,

―overpowers‖, ―beautiful game‖, ―glory‖ to show their praise for success of the athletes and the games

Most of the examined headlines formed a simple sentence of structure SVO However, CNN has some noun phrases as its headlines, such as: ―Spanish Olympic basketball team

in 'racist' photo row‖, ―Phelps on course with third gold medal‖, ―Endorsements pure gold for Phelps‖ With these headlines, CNN would like to focus on the actors, not the actions

From above analysis, we can see that both newspapers devote many columns to praise success of athletes and countries that win in competitions

3.1.2 The use of pictures and videos:

Both BBC and CNN use pictures to demonstrate their desired contents For example, when studying coverage on swimming in the two newspapers, we can find that CNN put pictures highlighting the number of medals Michael Phelps grab and the swimmer‘s happiness when winning the competition By adding the pictures, writer‘s respect to the greatest swimmer as well as one of the greatest Olympians of all time is highly emphasized

Picture 1: Michael Phelps is one medal away from holding the record for the most gold medals in Olympic history

(CNN, August 12, 2008, on ―Phelps dives into Olympic history‖)

Picture 2: Left to right: Brendan Hansen, Aaron Piersol and Michael Phelps celebrate Sunday's historic win

(CNN, August 18, 2008, ―Phelps wins historic eight gold medals‖)

BBC, however, chose 8 pictures of Phelps holding gold medals These pictures show both historic records of the ―US swimming legend‖ and his happiness of winning competitions (see picture 3)

Picture 3: US swimming star Michael Phelps has broken Mark Spitz's 36-year-old record of seven gold medals in a single Olympic Games

(BBC, Saturday 16 August 2008, ―Phelps‘ eight steps to greatness‖)

The writer‘s implication is that Phelps has made international titles and record breaking performances have helped him become the award professional collectors This reminds readers of the awards that he earned including World Swimmer of the Year Award in 2003,

2004, 2006, 2007, and 2008 and American Swimmer of the Year Award in 2001, 2002,

2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, and 2008 He has won a total of fifty-four career medals thus far

in major international competition, forty-five gold, seven silver, and two bronze spanning the Olympics, the World, and the Pan Pacific Championships

Besides, BBC also provided some video clips to better illustrate Phelps‘s success With these videos, the British institution seems to better visualize the extraordinary achievements of the US swimmer than CNN Readers can watch how medal was earned as well as the way the medal holder celebrates his winning

3.2 Lexical analysis

In this part, references to Olympics Beijing 2008 in the two e-newspapers BBC and CNN will be investigated Table 5 below illustrates different referring expressions used in different articles of the two newspapers:

Table 5 References to Olympics Beijing 2008 BBC and CNN online

Referring expressions

Cited in the article

Referring expressions

Cited in the article

1 One of the best

organized Games

in history

Beijing bids farewell to Olympics

The games in Beijing

Iraq cleared to compete in Summer Olympics

2 The 29th Games of

the modern Olympiad

Beijing bids farewell to Olympics

The Beijing Games

Grand spectacle close Beijing‘s Olympics

3 The Beijing

Games

Beijing bids farewell to Olympics

The Summer Games

Emotion kicks off China's Olympics

4 The Olympics Beijing bids The 2008 Emotion kicks

farewell to Olympics

Olympic Games off China's

Olympics

5 The sporting

action

Beijing bids farewell to Olympics

The 29th Olympic Games

Olympic show opens with a bang, 8 August

The Summer Olympics

Olympic show opens with a bang, 8 August

8 The 2008 Games Organizers hail

'glorious' Games

The greatest Olympics ever

Viewers react to the Beijing Olympics

9 This year‘s

summer Games

China Delighted with Olympics,

24 August 2008

Next month's Olympic Games

Iraq cleared to compete in Summer Olympics

10 This particular

Games

China Delighted with Olympics,

24 August 2008

Beijing‘s Olympics

Grand spectacle close Beijing‘s Olympics

There are both similarities and differences in the use of expressions to refer to the most unforgettable Olympic Games held in Beijing in the British and American press organizations

3.2.1 Use of neutral referring expressions for the event:

The two media agencies use different opinion-free references without any adjectives to depict the Games The expressions used in BBC include: ―The 29th Games of the modern Olympiad‖, ―The Beijing Games‖, ―The Olympics‖, ―The 2008 Games‖, ―The Summer Olympics‖, ―The sporting action‖, ―This year‘s summer Games‖, while CNN‘s choices are: ―Beijing‘s Olympics‖, ―The games in Beijing‖, ―The Beijing Games‖, ―The Summer Games‖, ―The 2008 Olympic Games‖, ―The 29th

Olympic Games‖, ―The race‖, ―Next month's Olympic Games‖ With these references, the authors have no intentions to judge, they just would like to mention the Games as a normal sport event only

3.2.2 Use positive references to indicate the Games:

In covering the Beijing Olympic Games, there are some referring expressions for the event that were opinion-led, showing the media institutions‘ viewpoint explicitly The table 5 suggests that more positive expressions referring to the sport games are used in BBC than CNN (3 out of 10 references in BBC as compared with 1 out of 10 in CNN) In order to provide readers with praise for the really successful Olympic Games, BBC and CNN add some connotative expressions For instance:

Thanks to the adjective ―particular‖ (in ―This particular Games‖), ―best organized‖ (in

―One of the best organized Games in history‖), ―starring‖ in ―Sixteen days of action, starring 10,000 athletes from 204 nations‖, ―glorious‖ (in ―16 glorious days‖), The Britain-based media agency refers Beijing Games to the Games that are really different from the past, the one of the most successful Olympic Games which were best organized with the attendance of thousands of athletes, the Games of success and glory

CNN, however, uses the adjective ―greatest‖ (in ―The greatest Olympics ever‖) to describe the event as the grand Games which are most-watched by viewers, the summer sport event with exceptional opening and closing ceremonies

By these references, it can also be implied that the media institutions highly appreciate China for hosting one of the most memorable Olympic Games

3.3 An analysis of two sample texts:

3.3.1 Syntactic structure analysis

3.3.1.1 The use of transitive and intransitive sentences

Examination of the transitive and intransitive sentences in the two sample texts: ―Beijing bids farewell to Olympics‖ (BBC) and ―Grand spectacle closes Beijing‘s Olympics‖ (CNN) reveals a great similarity

Table 6 Number of transitive and intransitive sentences in two sample texts

BBC article “Beijing bids farewell to Olympics”

CNN “Grand spectacle closes Beijing’s Olympics” Number of

- ―The Olympic games have drawn to a close with a glittering ceremony inside Beijing‘s Bird‘s Nest Stadium‖

- ―Beijing‘s dramatic farewell to the 29th Games of the modern Olympiad got under way with a magnificent firework display, which quickly segued into an amazing display of dancing and drumming‖

- ―It was a more celebratory affair, as exuberant athletes, dancers and musicians got into the party spirit‖

In these sentences, no objectives are mentioned The writer just wants to highlight the things happening Some prepositional phrases (the 2 former example sentences) and subordinate clause (the last sentence in above example) are added after the intransitive

verbs (―have drawn to a close‖, ―got under way‖, ―was‘) to describe a great celebratory exciting closing ceremony

Intransitive sentences also help BBC express its positive judgment For instance, intransitive verbs like ―brought to a close‖, ―were‖ and ―was‖, in combination with opinion-led words in the sentences below show the newspaper‘s favor for the great closing ceremony, the exceptional Games and China – the host nation of the Games:

- ―Grand fireworks and spectacular choreography brought to a close the Beijing Games Sunday as one of the most remarkable Olympics in recent history were declared at an end‖

- ―‘These were truly exceptional Games‘, he said, declaring them formally closed‖

- Also impressive was the emergence of a new world supporting superpower – the host nation.‖

3.3.1.2 The use of active and passive voices Results in table 7 show that in the reportage of closing ceremony of Beijing Olympics, there are many similarities in the use of active and passive voices

The common feature that BBC and CNN share is that passive voice is less used than active voice when reporting farewell to the Olympic Games in the capital of China Table 7 below shows that the percentage of passive form used in BBC is 17.1 while in CNN it is 12.5

Table 7 Active and passive voice used in BBC and CNN texts

BBC article “Beijing bids farewell to Olympics”

CNN “Grand spectacle closes Beijing’s Olympics”

Number of clauses Percentage Number of

In addition, it is found that most of the passive verbs are used without mentioning the agents Only 1 sentence uses passive voice with agent, that is: ―The British flag was raised and "God Save the Queen" sung by the choir‖ This indicates that the author only focuses

on the actions themselves, not the persons who cause those actions Instead of the conventional ―by + the causer of action‖ to show the doers of action in passive voice, the two media agencies use prepositional phrases, for example:

- The Olympic flag was handed to London mayor Boris Johnson

- Before Johnson was handed the Olympic flag from Guo Jinlong, the major of Beijing, and Rogge

- The sporting action was finally brought to an end earlier in the day

- One of the most remarkable Olympics in recent history were declared at an end

- Other spectacular sporting accomplishments were recorded at the Beijing Olympics

- Another shadow was cast during the opening weekend

More illustrations can be seen in the 2 tables below:

Table 8 Passive clauses found in the BBC article “Beijing bids farewell to Olympics”

The Olympic flag was handed to London mayor

The British flag was raised and "God Save the

Queen" sung by the choir

Before Johnson was handed the Olympic flag 39 Without agent