Political news has been playing an important role in American politics, not to mention the presidential campaign。 Theoretically, the duty of news on presidential campaign is to facilitate exchanging and sharing of information about electoral events, which means complete political neutrality should be achieved in terms of news report。 However, as a matter of fact, the news media are all influenced by their property, sources of funding and thus accordingly choose a favorable stance when reporting on an electoral event。 As a result, the news media would reconstruct a political issue and lead people to focus on some details while ignore others and even think in the way the media want them to。 Not only do people acquire factual information about the campaign and nominees from the news media, readers and viewers are unconsciously affected by the perspectives the media offered because news reports are labeled as “facts”。 As a carrier of information, language, while transmitting the contents of news, also reflects indirectly the attitudes of media towards a particular news event。 Hence the study of news language is not only an inevitable branch of communication but also one that is closely related to linguistics。From优Y尔E论W文W网wWw.YouERw.com 加QQ75201,8766

In addition, since all American media are impacted by the same American cultural values, such as worship of liberty, equality, independence, which are deeply rooted in people’s minds, there must be some common beliefs behind their differences。 Considering this factor, this paper also would try to explore whether there is any common ground which are formed by the nation’s entrenched beliefs, what are they and even how does they come into being。

The 2016 American presidential campaign which attracted worldwide attention came to end on November 8th with the Republican nominee Donald Trump gaining a majority of the U。S。 Electoral College。 The 2016 presidential election had gained great attention since Donald Trump, who is a non-politician, successful businessman and television personality, announced his candidacy for the 2016 election。 He was formally nominated at the Republican Convention in July。 Another candidate from Democratic Party is the former first lady and Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who became the first female candidate to be nominated for president by a major U。S。 political party。 With their special identities, distinctly different styles and some “episodes” during the whole process, it became an unprecedented campaign which nearly tore American society apart。 During the whole presidential campaign, the effects of related news reports to voters can never be overrated and among them reports on presidential debates are of great significance for that public debate is a great chance for candidates to promote his/her political philosophy and win the favor of voters。

1。2  Methodology and Structure of the Study

This thesis is a study of news reports on American presidential debate in American mainstream media, trying to unveil the hidden messages and political stances behind them。 The detailed analysis is conducted on the basis of Fairclough’s three-dimensional model and Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar。 All the chosen materials are from prestigious American news media。

The paper mainly includes four parts: the first chapter gives a general introduction of the background and objectives of the paper and also reviews related literature which are crucial to the development of Critical Discourse Analysis。 Chapter Two is a theoretical foundation of the thesis。 In this part, three-dimensional model and systemic-functional grammar are illustrated in detail。 The third part is the core component of the thesis, analysis about the chosen sample news based on previous preparation is conducted。 Four news reports on the third presidential debate respectively from CNN, Fox News, New York Times and Washington Post have been chosen as analysis objects。 Focusing not only on their differences but also similarities, this part attempt to discover the different ideology behind different media and try to answer whether there is any common political belief。 Chapter Four offers findings, discussions and conclusions of the study and gives suggestions to all news readers。