Abstract: News plays a very important role in informing and influencing the readers by speaking with facts. In recent years, territorial disputes have attracted the attention of public and the government’s attention. In July, 2016, the South China Sea Issue aroused concern. This paper collects the news reports of the South China Sea Issue published on several American mainstream media. Adopting the means of discourse analysis, this paper uses Discourse Power Theory stemmed from Michel Foucault and the analytic tools of Systematic Functional Grammar to analyze the texts. The whole analyzing process is divided into three parts, namely, register, linguistic features and speech reporting. 

Key words: discourse power; news; register; linguistic features; speech reporting

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1. Introduction to the South China Sea Issue-1

2. Introduction of the Discourse Power-2

2.1 Definition of Discourse Power-2

2.2 Literature Review-4

2.3 Approach to Discourse Analyzing-5

3. An Analysis of Discourse Power in News on South China Sea Issue-7

3.1 Register-7

3.1.1 Field-7

3.1.2 Tenor-9

3.1.3 Mode-10

3.2 Linguistic Features-11

3.2.1 Vocabulary-11

3.2.2 Voice-13

3.2.3 Transitivity-15

3.3 Speech Reporting-18

3.3.1 Modes of Speech Reporting-18

3.3.2 Reporting Verbs-22

3.3.3 News Sources-25

4. Conclusion-27

References-29