A Critical Discourse Analysis of Different News Reports on the Same Event: Illustrated with Examples from China Daily and The Guardian ()
1. Introduction
Critical Discourse Analysis, the critical study of language that focuses on the connections of language, power and ideology, was put forward by Fairclough in his book Language and Power (Fairclough, 1989: p. 26), after which it has been widely applied to researches in various fields, especially in the analysis of news reports. Fairclough’s sociocultural approach (Fairclough, 1992: pp. 62-96), van Dijk’s sociocognitive approach (Van Dijk, 2008: pp. 56-110), and Wodak’s (2009: pp. 63-94) discourse-historical approach are traditional methods. Nowadays, news reports have become one of the main sources from which people obtain information about what is happening both at home and abroad. However, although all media state that their reports are objective, news report inevitably conveys its author’s and country’s ideology, which can be used to distort facts and influence readers’ attitudes towards certain social event and other countries.
In 2018, The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government proposed several amendments, which will allow Hong Kong to surrender fugitives to the Chinese mainland. The lack of knowledge of the extradition bill and the fact that some people stoked fears led to the protest on June 9th and the suspension of these amendments. After the amendments were completely halted, some radical forces continued to incite more violent protests that sent Hong Kong into chaos, which lasted for several months. What happened in Hong Kong attracted attention from people all around the world, and different countries’ reports on the same event varied greatly. Britain also kept reporting related events in Hong Kong. Illustrated with examples from The Guardian and China Daily, this study attempts to do a critical discourse analysis of Sino-Britain news reports on the Extradition Bill Incident to explore the hidden ideologies as well as the social and historical factors. The study attempts to shed light on how different the news reports reporting the same event can be and how newspapers use discursive strategies to influence their readers’ attitudes towards certain event. Besides, it may serve as a reminder that critical awareness has to be enhanced while we are reading.
2. Critical Discourse Analysis of News Discourse
Since the 1970s, CDA has been applied to the analysis of news discourse. Fowler (1986: p. 52) studied the headlines of some news reports in his book Linguistics and Criticism and points out that news discourse is never an objective description of reality, but a way to transmit ideology. Van Dijk (1991: p. 198) is the first one who addresses prejudice and racism in discourse and the author of several books on news analysis. In his book Racism and Press, he points out that “implications, suggestions, presuppositions and other implicit, indirect or vague means of expressing underlying meaning or opinions may be used to persuade readers to the point of view of the newspaper”. Fairclough mainly focuses on the hidden ideologies in news reports and in Media Discourse, he summarizes various approaches to media discourse, including linguistic, conversational, semiotic, and socio-cognitive analysis, etc. and introduces his sociocultural approach (Fairclough, 1995a). In his book Critical Discourse Analysis, he suggests that discourse representation in news media can be seen as an ideological process and may be tuned to social determinants and social effects (Fairclough, 1995b: p. 65).
In terms of methodology, besides the conventional approaches mentioned before, new theories proposed by CDA practitioners, e.g. Van Leeuwen’s (2008) social actor network and social action network, as well as concepts and tools from cognitive linguistics, e.g. Cap’s (2013) proximization model, and corpus linguistics are also applied in the critical analysis of news discourse. For instance, Qian (2010) analyzes the discursive construction around terrorism in The People’s Daily and The Sun before and after 9.11 based on the self-built corpus. A related line of development is multimodal: the grammar of visual design proposed by Kress & van Leeuwen (2006) has been well-accepted in the multimodal analysis of news discourse.
Since the second half of 2019, the Extradition Bill Incident has caused global concern, and media from various countries have kept reporting relevant events. The same event reported by different media sometimes varies a lot, and a critical analysis of the news discourse may provide some insight into the underlying causes and effective strategies dealing with this kind of crisis. Fairclough’s approach to CDA is not limited to pure linguistic analysis, and conducts three-dimensional interdisciplinary study; moreover, it is recognized as the most complete and practical method of CDA, thus is chosen as the theoretical framework of this study. This research utilizes both qualitative and quantitative methods to compare and analyze news reports from The Guardian and China Daily on same events, studying their vocabulary, grammar, production, and hidden sociocultural factors.
3. Fairclough’s Three-Dimensional Framework
Fairclough’s approach to CDA is first explained in Language and Power; see also Discourse and Social Change and Critical Discourse Analysis. His Three-dimensional Framework is recognized as the most complete and practical method of Critical Discourse Analysis. Fairclough argues that discourse analysis should be conducted within sociocultural practice, which requires attention to textual organization at all levels. Discourse here refers to the actual use of language, and can be seen as a form of social practice. He combines linguistic-oriented discourse analysis with theories from sociology and ideology, advocating interdisciplinary discourse study, and analyzing discourse from three dimensions: text, discourse practice, and social practice (Fairclough, 1992: p. 63). Accordingly, he proposes the procedures of CDA: description, interpretation and explanation (Fairclough, 1992: p. 73). The detailed introduction of the three stages will be presented in Section 5 (Results and Discussions).
For the following analysis and discussion, it is necessary to give an explicit definition of ideology under Fairclough’s Three-dimensional Framework. Fairclough draws upon Gramsci’s definition of ideology: it refers to the conception of the world that is implicitly manifest in art, in law, in economic activity and in individual and collective life (Gramsci, 1971: p. 328). In other words, it can be described as a set of conscious and unconscious opinions or beliefs, especially political beliefs that characterize a particular culture and ideas proposed by the ruling class of society to all members of society. Texts can be seen as the implicit and unconscious materialization of ideologies, whose properties at various levels, such as vocabulary, grammar, metaphors, presuppositions, implicature, style, etc., can be potentially ideological (Fairclough, 1992: pp. 87-91).
4. Methodology
Language does not mirror an independent object world but constructs and constitutes it (Barker & Galasiński, 2001: p. 1). Therefore, critical analysis of discourse is chosen as the major approach in this study to provide insight into how news reports are used to influence public perceptions.
Both qualitative and quantitative methods are adopted in the analysis to compare the news reports from China Daily and The Guardian. Following Fairclough’s approach, this study is conducted with three stages, analyzing from three levels: the textual level, the discourse practice level and the sociocultural level. In the first stage, wording and modality of texts are analyzed. In the second stage, news sources are examined. In the third stage, sociohistorical context are discussed. Quantitative analysis focuses on the modality and news sources of the texts and the number and percentage of different modal verbs and news sources were calculated with the help of AntConc (Version 3.5.8), a corpus analysis toolkit for concordancing and text analysis.
The Guardian and China Daily were chosen as the data sources for their international distribution and good reputation. Searches were conducted on the two newspapers’ websites for articles in November 2019, including the search terms “Hong Kong”, “police”, and “protests”. Then, for comparison, these articles from the two media reporting the same event were matched and picked out. A total of 10 samples are included in the study, reporting 5 events occurred in HK in November 2019, i.e. each sample in China Daily has its counterpart reporting the same event in The Guardian to make comparison. Each article and its date are supplied in Table 1.
The study is intended to answer the following questions:
Q1: What are the differences in language use of the two newspapers’ news reports on the Extradition Bill Incident in terms of Fairclough’s Framework?
Q2: What are the hidden ideologies embodied by linguistic features and images constructed in the two media?
5. Results and Discussions
This part follows Fairclough’s Three-dimensional Framework, carrying on concrete analysis and discussion from three dimensions—text, discourse practice and social practice.
5.1. Description
Description refers to the analysis of texts, describing the formal features of texts.
Text here refers to both written and spoken kind. It can be done from four aspects: vocabulary, grammar, cohesion, and text structure, studying words, clauses and sentences, how clauses and sentences are linked together, and organizational properties of texts respectively (Fairclough, 1992: pp. 73-75). This stage focuses on the following analytical properties: word meaning, wording, metaphor, transitivity, theme, connectives and argumentation, modality, politeness, interactional control (Fairclough, 1992: pp. 137-168). Wording, a crucial perspective of vocabulary, refers to the words used in a text, while modality, which falls on the heading of grammar, refers to the uncertainty of a sentence (ibid.: p. 75-78). Both are principal dimensions to examine the authors’ opinions, therefore, the analysis in this stage will be conducted from these two aspects.
5.1.1. Wording
The wording of a piece of writing or a speech is the words used in it, especially when these are chosen to generate a particular effect. “There are always alternative ways of signifying particular domains of experience, which entails interpreting in a particular way… As one changes wording, one also changes the meaning (Fairclough, 1992: pp. 190-192).” The construction of a text can be regarded as a process of vocabulary selection, which is influenced by certain social context, ideology and power relations, thus the choice of words normally reflects the writer’s attitude towards the event and his/her ideology. In the selected samples, protesters and police are the main participators, thus, words describing the three are extracted respectively. Table 2 and Table 3 show these words used in the two media’s reports.
From Table 2, it can be seen that the two newspapers shape totally different images of protesters and great difference exists in their attitudes towards the protesters. First of all, China Daily calls them “rioters” and “radicals”; while they are called “pro-democrats” and “activists” in The Guardian. According to Oxford English Dictionary (2020), “radical” refers to “a person with radical opinions”; “rioters” refer to a group of people behave in a violent way in a public place”; “activist” refers to “a person who works to achieve political or social change, especially as a member of an organization with particular aims”. From these definitions, the support of The Guardian for the protesters can be seen.
Moreover, their protests are praised by The Guardian as “pro-democracy campaign” and “the civil disobedience”. “Civil disobedience” was coined by Thoreau as title of an essay originally published as Resistance to Civil Government. It refers to the refusal to obey the demands of a government without resorting to violence. But it is not the case. Though The Guardian tries to conceal the violent behaviors of protesters, in Sample 5.1, it inevitably mentions what the protesters did on that day: “smashing windows and doors”, “threw petrol bombs”, etc.. However, their protests are still named “the civil disobedience” in the same report.
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Table 2. Different words describing protesters.
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Table 3. Different words describing police.
More analysis will be unfolded with the following examples.
Examples:
(1) Hong Kong police enter campus despite pleas from protesters The operation came less than nine hours after a masked protester told local media that about 20 people were still holed up on campus and urged the police not to enter the site because most were terrified. (Sample 1.1, The Guardian).
(2) The move comes after the university informed the force that the campus has been severely damaged. In addition, many dangerous items were left by the radical students and rioters who barricaded themselves at the university for about two weeks. (Sample 1.2, China Daily)
Sample 1.1 and Sample 1.2 report an operation of HK police: they entered the Hong Kong Polytechnic University to remove dangerous materials and collect evidence of vandalism and other criminal acts done to university property. The campus had been utilized since Nov 13 as a fort by radical protesters to paralyze the nearby Cross-Harbour Tunnel, and used as a manufacturing base for gasoline bombs, with dangerous chemicals stolen from laboratories.
In Example (1), the reporter uses “despite pleas from protesters” and “most were terrified” to imply the “brutality” of the police and the “helplessness” of the protesters. In fact, however, the protesters badly destroyed the campus and the police hospitalized those who needed medical treatment in time. In Example (2), China Daily stressed it is the university that “informed” the force to clear up the campus to state the reasonableness of the action. They seized thousands of hazardous items, such as gasoline bombs, corrosive liquids, etc. and handed over the campus to university’s management in the next day.
Besides, “were still holed up” is also in contrast with “barricaded themselves”: “be holed up” means “hiding in some place”, while if someone barricades himself inside a building, he places barriers across the entrance so that other people cannot get in. Since Nov 13, the protesters have token up the campus for two weeks long. They set up barricades, hurled gasoline bombs at Cross-Harbour Tunnel toll booths, and set fire to two footbridges that connect the PolyU campus. Not so much “hiding” as “fortifying”. Nevertheless, The Guardian intentionally uses “hole up” to insinuate that the protesters are innocent and the police are terrifying, which is not the case.
It can be seen that The Guardian deliberately ignores the violent acts and vandalism of the protesters, describing the protesters as the weak. In Sample 1.1, they are helpless, but brave and righteous and fighting for democracy relentlessly. By contrast, through describing what the protesters did, China Daily presents the real situations.
(3) On Friday, hundreds of protesters marched through Hong Kong’s business district, holding flowers and black banners and blocking traffic. Demonstrators blamed the police for Chow’s death, shouting: “Hongkongers, seek revenge!” (Sample 3.1, The Guardian)
(4) Widespread vandalism was subsequently reported on the university campus, with hundreds of masked, radical perpetrators marching to the residence of the university’s president, breaking windows and spraying graffiti on walls. A canteen, bank branch and office of a professor from the Chinese mainland were also reportedly ransacked and vandalized. The violence occurred amid a number of online posts blaming the student’s death on local police action and calling for “revenge”. (Sample 3.2, China Daily)
Sample 3.1 and Sample 3.2 report the death of Chow Tsz-lok, a student from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and the subsequent violent activities. He fell from a building on Nov 4 and died on Nov 8 because of a brain injury in the fall, becoming the first fatality that might be linked with protests. No evidence has shown why he fell, but the protesters clang to the view that local police action caused his death and widespread vandalism was subsequently performed.
Example (3) and Example (4) describe the same scene. However, The Guardian intentionally only describes those nonviolent actions—“holding flowers and black banners and blocking traffic”, not mentioning they “breaking windows and spraying graffiti on walls” and “a canteen, bank branch and office of a professor from the Chinese mainland were also reportedly ransacked and vandalized” reported in China Daily. It fails to offer an objective rendition of events and has persistently glorified a movement that now shows no limitations to its savage behavior.
In the description of the police, China Daily and The Guardian both use lots of verbs to depict their actions. China Daily uses verbs including “collect”, “ensure”, “checked”, “recorded”, “maintain”, “look into”, “enforce”, etc., building a righteous, positive, responsible image; while The Guardian shapes a negative image with words like “storm”, “insisted”, “denied”, “refusing”, “fired”, “shot”. Samples in The Guardian include a great deal of depiction of police’s attacking on the protesters, trying to reveal the alleged “brutality” of the police, who are said to use “excessive force”, and launch “notorious attack on protesters and commuters”. Indeed, The Guardian covers the events with a selective version of events tailored to the worn narrative of blaming the police, which will be illustrated with Example (5).
(5) Confrontations between police and protesters have grown increasingly violent with injuries on both sides, but before now no one has been killed in clashes. On 1 October, police shot a protester in the chest with a live round and another in the leg on 4 October, but both recovered. In September, a journalist was blinded in one eye after being hit by a rubber bullet fired by police. (Sample 3.1, The Guardian)
In this example, the reporter points out the confrontations have grown violent, but only stresses the events in which police hurt two protesters and a journalist, without mentioning what the protesters have done to the police and innocent residents. Moreover, it fails to place the actions of the police within the context they occurred, i.e. as a response to violence and wholesale rioting. As a matter of fact, the activist was shot after trying to steal a policeman’s gun and during the afternoon a man was doused in flammable liquid and set on fire by protesters for purely arguing with protesters for saying Hong Kong belongs to China.
(6) The police arrested five people for possession of offensive weapon and seized around 100 petrol bombs during an operation. (Sample 5.2, China Daily)
It this example, the sentence describes the actions of the police during an operation. “For possession of offensive weapon” points out the reason of arresting the five persons, while “seize” here means “taking illegal or stolen things away from someone”. It can be seen that police were just doing their job according to law. They have the duty and responsibility to uphold order, stability, and the rules of law in the city, which are exactly what they are doing.
5.1.2. Modality
Modality is a major dimension of discourse and it is central and pervasive in discourses. It refers to the area of meaning that lies between yes and no. Modal verbs (e.g. must, may, can, should and so forth), as well as modal adjectives (e.g. likely, probable, possible), modal adverbs (e.g. probably, possibly, obviously, definitely), tenses, intonation patterns (e.g. speaking hesitantly), tag question and hedges (e.g. sort of, a bit, or something) can all express modality. They allow partial perspectives to be universalized, dissimulating the fact that the writers are expressing their own opinions, or acting as a vehicle of expressing attitudes of some other individual or group (Fairclough, 1992: pp. 158-162). Halliday (2004: p. 620) points out that modal operators can be classified into three groups according to its value: high, median and low. Almost no modality marker, except modal verbs has been found in the selected samples, thus Table 4 only presents
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Table 4. Distribution of modal verbs in the two newspapers.
the number and percentage of modal verbs according to Halliday’s division. The number and percentage of modal verbs in the two newspapers’ news reports are as follows:
As shown in Table 4, median value modal verbs take up a large proportion, while high value modal verbs account for a relatively small proportion in both newspaper samples. The following are the contrastive analysis illustrated with specific examples.
(7) Beijing may be indicating that it is preparing to take matters into its own hands by having the National People’s Congress issue a legal interpretation forcing its enactment. (Sample 5.1, The Guardian)
(8) In a statement issued Saturday night, the spokesman said the radicals caused grave inconvenience to residents and threatened public safety, adding that the police action to disperse and arrest suspected offenders was necessary as public safety must be guaranteed and the rule of law must be upheld. (Sample 5.2, China Daily)
Sample 5.1 and Sample 5.2 report Hong Kong protesters’ attack on Chinese news agency offices on Nov 2, 2019. On the afternoon of Nov 2, a number of protesters destroyed Xinhua Asia-Pacific Regional Bureau office building’s security facilities, smashed the front gate and some of its windows, and spray-painted insulting words on the walls.
In Example (7), “may be indicating” expresses The Guardian’s conjecture of Beijing’s intention. By using this model verb, the newspaper conveys its groundless prediction. Since Hong Kong’s return to the motherland, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government has been implementing “one country, two systems” in accordance with the Basic Law. The city is granted a high degree of autonomy. Article 5 of the Basic Law stipulates that the capitalist system and way of life in Hong Kong shall remain unchanged for 50 years from 1997. The extradition bill will just allow Hong Kong to surrender fugitives on a case-by-case basis to mainland China, whereas The Guardian overstates the bill’s influence on purpose to intensify panic among those who know a little about the extradition bill and “one country, two systems”.
In Example (8), the high value model verb “must” is used twice, showing the firm attitude of the Chinese government towards “stopping violence, curbing chaos and restoring order” in HK and necessity for the police of dispersing and arresting suspected offenders. Demonstrations since June, triggered by the now-withdrawn extradition bill, often ended in violence, with protesters hurling gasoline bombs, committing arson and vandalizing shops and public transport facilities. Police officers in HK, although under threat of serious injury or even death, have no way but to exert necessary force to cope with irrational violence for the sake of public safety during the unrest.
5.2. Interpretation
Interpretation refers to the analysis of discursive practice, which studies the force, the coherence, and the intertextuality of texts (Fairclough, 1992: pp. 78-86). Fairclough uses the term “discourse” to refer to language use. According to him, discourse contributes to social structure, while the latter shapes and constrains the former. The analysis of discursive practice involves the processes of text production, distribution, and consumption. Texts are produced, consumed, and distributed differently in specific social contexts.
Intertextuality (Fairclough, 1992: pp. 101-105) is the most salient aspect in this stage, which refers to the property of texts that they are full of snatches of other texts. It studies the following dimensions: manifest intertextuality, interdiscursivity, textual transformation, and how texts constitute social identities. Manifest intertextuality, a vital way to examine the production of texts, studies what and how other texts are drawn upon in the constitution of the text (Fairclough, 1992: pp. 117-118). Fairclough discusses manifest intertextuality in relation to discourse representation, which refers to a news report’s speech reporting, since there are differences in what is quoted when, how, and why between news reports on a same event (Fairclough, 1992: pp. 118-119). He suggests that the representation of discourse in news media can be seen as an ideological process of considerable social importance, and that the finer detail of discourse representation may be tuned to social determinants and social effects (Fairclough, 1995b: p. 65).
Therefore, news sources, which are explicitly marked with devices such as quotation marks and reporting clauses (e.g. “he said”, “He claimed”, “according to sb.”) in the samples will be analyzed to study the production of the samples. They can be classified into three groups: specific, semi-specific, and unidentified news sources (Xin, 2006). All the news sources in the samples are shown in the table.
As shown in Table 5, difference does exist in the two newspapers’ news sources. The Guardian quotes the utterances of the protesters for several times and the
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Table 5. News sources in the samples.
speech of former US president Donald Trump about the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act 2019 backing the protesters. Table 6 shows that the explicitness of the sources in China Daily and The Guardian differs a lot. Specific sources rank the first (55.56%) in China Daily while semi-specific sources take up a large proportion in The Guardian (70.83%). It is generally believed that the more specific the sources are, the more objective the news reports will be. Thus, from this perspective, China Daily’s reports are more objective than The Guardian’s. Besides, it is journalists who decide whose speech to adopt. Therefore, the study of news sources in the samples is of vital importance to analyze the production of the reports and the real intention underlying it. The following examples are selected to make a further analysis.
(9) “If you are willing to march or protest in the streets, which requires blood and sweat and tears, it’s much easier to walk downstairs and vote,” said one man who has taken part in the street protests, and asked not to be named because of fear of official retaliation. (Sample 2.1, The Guardian)
(10) For a retiree surnamed Lai, what she wants is to have district councilors who could bring real benefits to a community roiled by almost six months of violence. “Rebuilding society is no easy task. I think it’s most important for us to unite and tide over this crisis. We must vote for those who really love Hong Kong.” (Sample 2.2, China Daily)
Sample 2.1 and Sample 2.2 report Hong Kong’s 2019 district council election. The registered electors turned up in record numbers to cast their ballots in the polls. In Example (9), what the man said is used to express the author’s own opinion that the election is a great opportunity for the protesters to “have their voice heard” and act against the government. In the later paragraphs, the reporter says, “A landslide for pro-democracy candidates would have few immediate political consequences, but longer term it might slightly tip the balance of power in the city, because the councils play a role in choosing the chief executive and some legislators”, which further exposes the stance of the reporter. In Example (10), the use of “roiled by”, “violence”, “unite and tide over this crisis” and “who really love Hong Kong” shows the lady’s, also China Daily’s attitude towards the protesters and their activities—the protesters only bring violence and chaos, rather than benefits; what they have done is not for the good of Hong Kong; we Chinese should unite to resolve the crisis.
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Table 6. Distribution of the news sources.
5.3. Explanation
Fairclough (1989: p. 26) calls this third stage “explanation” in his book Language and Power, and renames it “interpretation” in Discourse and Social Change (Fairclough, 1992: p. 73). To differentiate the third stage and the second stage, “explanation” is adopted in this study. In this stage, Fairclough discusses discourse in relation to ideology and to power and places discourse within a view of power as hegemony. He claims that discursive practices are the material forms of ideology, which contributes to the production, reproduction or transformation of relations of domination (Fairclough, 1992: pp. 86-87). He regards language use as a form of social practice and points out social structure is both a condition and an effect of social practice. This stage aims to explain why the discourse practice is as it is and the effects of it. It focuses on the social matrix of discourse and effects of discourse (Fairclough, 1992: pp. 237-238). To further specify implicit ideologies of the two media and explain the features of discourse practice, sociohistorical contexts in which the two media’s news reports are produced and the discursive strategies they use will be analyzed in this stage.
Hong Kong was seized by Britain in 1841. Britain maintained colonial rule over it for more than 50 years. In 1997, Britain was reluctant to but finally returned Hong Kong to China after several rounds of negotiations, which harmed its interest. Therefore, when the protests in 2019 happened, The Guardian and China Daily, to some extent, on behalf of their own country’s stances, utilized different discursive strategies to justify the actions of the protesters and the police respectively, which is embodied in the examples below and above.
(11) At a media briefing, assistant commissioner of police Chow Yat-ming insisted the operation was not to make arrests, but to handle flammable and corrosive materials, including a large number of molotov cocktails, and to gather evidence of what police called a crime scene. (Sample 1.1 The Guardian)
(12) Ho told a news briefing on Wednesday that officers will remove dangerous materials, including gasoline bombs, corrosive liquids and other offensive weapons believed to be stored on the premises. They will also collect evidence of vandalism and other criminal acts done to university property, Ho said. (Sample 1.2, China Daily)
(13) Hong Kong authorities have frequently insisted that protesters are a vocal but small minority, while they the support of a “silent majority”. (Sample 2.1 The Guardian)
(14) “They’re against almost everything related to the mainland. These so-called ‘pan-democrats’ are actually blocking (the progress) of democracy,” he said while denouncing the “disappointing” behavior of the opposition camp in the past few months. (Sample 2.2, China Daily)
(15) In a “citizen’s press conference” held by protesters following the news of Chow’s death, demonstrators said: “In this tragic moment, we plead to all to bear in heart and mind who the real culprits behind Tsz-lok’s death were. His fall was not an unfortunate accident. It was an intentional manslaughter executed by tyranny and the police force.” (Sample 3.1, The Guardian)
(16) “Some people” in society are using the tragic death to fuel the chaos, Wong said. His association represents more than 2600 educators from elementary, secondary and tertiary institutions. Wong stressed that the tragedy should serve as a warning of the risks of engaging in dangerous activities, although the cause of the student’s death remained unclear and investigations are ongoing. (Sample 3.2, China Daily)
Implication and omission are key strategies emerging in The Guardian. Van Dijk (1991: p. 198) points out that implicit ways of expressing underlying meaning or opinions, such as implication and suggestions, may be used to persuade readers to the point of view of the newspaper. In Example (11), the use of “insisted” and “what police called a crime scene” implies that the operation was to make arrests and the protesters did not commit crimes. Example (13) indicates that the protesters have the support of the majority. In Example (15), the death of the student, with no evidence showing that it is linked to police action, is called “an intentional manslaughter executed by tyranny and the police force”; in Example (9), the author makes a groundless prediction that Chinese central government is trying to use the extradition bill to “take matters into its own hands”. Implications like these in The Guardian constitute invisible means of supporting the protests without the newspaper having to take an overt pro-protest stance.
The contents that are omitted are as telling as those that are included. As shown in the discussion of Example (3), (4), and (5), the coverage of Hong Kong in The Guardian is selective, disingenuous and partisan. It glosses over many of the unseemly details of the Hong Kong protests to laud the “pro-democracy campaigns”, and defame HK police. Most of time, The Guardian only stresses the police’s responses to violence and no mention was made of what the protesters have done to the police and innocent residents.
While in China Daily, the news reports are inclined to expresses their stance and attitudes with someone’s words, such as residents, spokesmen of authorities, leaders of influential organizations, to make the texts more credible, as is shown in Example (10), (12), (14), and (16). Besides, it tends to depict what exactly the protesters and the police did, to present the real situation and prove the legitimacy of the operations of the police, as is shown in Example (4) and (6) respectively. In Example (8), the resolution of the government to solve the crisis and the legitimacy of police’ operation are reiterated. In Example (14), the author expresses strong condemnation for the violent conducts of protesters. Example (16), the author draws upon Wong’s words, noting that the cause of the death is unclear and it is used by some people to fuel the chaos.
Through analysis, the hidden ideologies of the two media and the different images constructed can be summarized as below (Table 7).
From Table 7, it can be seen that the two media constructs totally different images of the protesters and the police, which may influence their readers’ attitude towards the protests in Hong Kong. The implicit expressions in The Guardian
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Table 7. Image construction and hidden ideologies.
are likely to deepen the panic, anger and misunderstanding of a part of HK residents, especially the young, who may know a little about the extradition bill, the history of HK and the principle of “one country, two systems”. Moreover, the selective and partisan coverage in The Guardian, in turn, can give rebellious rioters the illusion of righteousness, and might appeal to more violent protests.
6. Conclusion
Based on Fairclough’s Three-dimensional Framework, the study analyzes and compares news reports on the Extradition Bill Incident from The Guardian and China Daily from the perspectives of wording, modality, news sources, and sociocultural factors, illustrating the two newspapers’ different attitudes towards the Extradition Bill Incident and different images constructed in different media. The Guardian shapes a righteous and brave image of protesters, and a negative image of police, showing its support for protesters. While China Daily shows China’s resolution to wind down the riots, and expresses condemnation for what the protesters have done, building positive and responsible images of the police. The study discloses the strategies, such as implication and omission that The Guardian uses to glorify the protesters and manipulate public opinion. While China Daily tends to depict what exactly the protesters and the police did, to present the real situation and clear the name of the police and the government.