CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS ON CHINESE AND AMERICAN NEWS WEBSITES REPORTING SOUTH CHINA SEA TERRITORIAL DISPUTE

Abstract

This study focuses to understand the differences in reporting the same of The South China Sea
territorial dispute by two international news websites namely The New York Times and China Daily
and to exposed the hidden ideology behind the representation of those news websites. Three
Dimensional Framework by Fairclough in Critical Discourse Analysis were used in this study along
with Systemic Functional Grammar particularly in transitivity analysis. The articles in this study were
collected from China Daily and The New York Times news website. The finding revealed that both
news websites reported the issue of territorial dispute using material process and verbal process
dominantly but The New York Times dominantly use material process more than China Daily. Next,
the study found out that China Daily depicted the act of Beijing saying that territorial dispute as a
normal thing due to the area of water are belong to China while The New York Times depicted the act
of China as a violation of Sea rules of navigation in responding the territorial dispute. Last, the result
of this study found that China Daily stated in its news about how the US presence as meddling in the
disputed area of The South China Sea while The New York Times stated that the act of China in
responding the dispute is a harsh attitude and violating the rules. To sum up the study, the
combination of both theories is somehow useful in the discourse to expose the hidden meaning and
ideology.
Keywords: Constrastive study, territorial dispute, three dimensional framework