3。2 Reporting Verbs of the Reported Speech 11

3。3 News Sources of the Reported Speech 14

IV Conclusion 18

4。1 Major Findings 18

4。2 Limitations and suggestions 18

References 20

Appendix 22

I Introduction

1。1 Research Background

China’s Victory-day parade, or China’s V-day parade for short, held on September 3rd, 2015 in Beijing, marked the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II。 Troops of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, with the addition to troops from 17 different countries, participated in the parade and marched past the Tian’an Men Square。 Awarded medals were granted for Veterans who fought for China in World War II。 Chinese high officials and state representatives from other countries attended the parade。 Advanced military equipments such as tanks, missiles and fighter jets were displayed。 Meanwhile, president Xi announced 300,000 cut of Chinese military troops in his speech。 As an important military parade of an emerging power, China’s V-day parade in 2015 drew great attention, civilian or governmental, from the rest of the world and was widely reported by Chinese and foreign media。 News reports released from a variety of news agencies around the world show differences from each other。 Not only literary devices but also linguistic factors among all the reports are worthy of consideration。 

This thesis tries to select news reports about China’s V-day parade in 2015 from newspapers of the USA, the UK and China as the research data。 Based on one of the Critical Discourse Analysis approaches -- Fairclough’s Three-dimension Model, a comparative analysis of the Reported Speech in Chinese, American and British news reports is conducted。 By studying the reporting modes, reporting verbs and news sources in reported speeches, this thesis aims to analyze how reporters effectively convey and persuade readers to accept their views through the reported speech as well as reveal the ideologies concealed under news discourses。 

1。2 Research Objectives

First, this thesis will analyze the characteristics of reporting modes, reporting verbs and news sources used in news discourses about China’s V-day parade in 2015 by accounting and sorting them into different groups, such as direct speech or indirect speech, positive or negative or neutral reporting verbs and specified or unspecified or unmentioned news resources, and conclude the similarities and differences of reported speeches among newspapers from America, Britain and China。 

Second, based on the features of the reported speech, this thesis will study how the reporters from Chinese, British and American newspapers use reporting modes, reporting verbs and news sources in their news reports about China’s V-day parade in 2015 to express their views and persuade their readers to accept them。 

Third, the social background (the relationships between China and America and Britain) and political stands will be discussed to reveal the underlying meaning expressed in news discourses and those hidden ideologies and power relationships behind them。 

In short, this thesis mainly focuses on two questions:

1。 What are the features of reporting modes, reporting verbs and news sources of reported speech used in Chinese, British and American newspapers? What are the differences?

2。 What are the attitudes and ideologies concealed behind these differences or similarities? 

1。3 Data Collection

This thesis takes 24 news reports on China’s V-Day Parade in 2015 as the research data。 16 of them are selected from western countries, 8 pieces from the United States of America (roughly 8,698 words in total) and the other 8 from the United Kingdom (roughly 4,862 words in total)。 Among those 8 reports from the USA, 4 major news agencies are related, namely The New York Times, USA Today, The Washington Post and Chicago Tribune (two reports from each agency)。 Similarly, three British news agencies are connected to those 8 pieces of British news, namely The Telegraph (2), The Guardian (2), and The Independent (4)。 In China, 8 pieces of new discourse are chosen, 4 from China Daily (roughly 2406 words in total) and the other 4 from Xinhua News Agency (roughly 1363 words in total)。 Those news agencies mentioned above, regional, national or international, are all well organized and sold in high volumes, exerting great influence on the local areas, domestic market or even the world。 All of the news discourses are collected from the official websites of those newspapers with the contents identical to the published version。 As all of the selected news discourses contain sufficient reported speeches, a corpus is constructed, accounting for roughly 17,329 words。 For the sake of convenience, the reportages from the USA are numbered from 1-8, those from the UK are numbered from 9-16, and those from China are numbered from 17-24。 (See Table 1。1- 1。3)