对美国财政部 2001-2012 年《国际经济与汇率政策报告》中意识形态的批评性研究

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Research Background

With  rapid  economic  growth  and  increasingly  active  participation  in  international cooperation and exchanges, China has been gaining more and more attention from the international  community  gradually.  China’s  great  improvements in its economy  and social well-being since the implementation of the policy of opening up and reform are unparalleled  in global history.  As  China  is  growing  into  a  major  player  in  the international  arena,  the  western  countries, particularly  the sole  superpower  in  the world—the  United  States,  are  closely  watching  the  remarkable  changes that  China  is currently undergoing. Although both China and the United States have realized that the cooperation  in various  fields  are beneficial  to  both  nations  and  the  rest  of  the  world, China’s  eye-catching  economic achievements  and  general rise have  understandably brought much suspicion and doubt from the United States. 

Amongst the various obstacles in the US—China relationship, China’s economic and exchange rate policies have always been in the central place. Since 1988, when the US Congress passed the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act, the US Department of the Treasury has been required to release its Report to Congress on International Economic and Exchange  Rate  Policies  on  a  semi-annual  basis.  The  semi-annual  US  Treasury report reviews developments in international economic and exchange rate policies and is required to be submitted to the US Congress. In the process of preparing the report, the Treasury Department consults with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and IMF  management  and  staff.  The  United  States  government  has  been repeatedly urging the Chinese currency, i.e. the renminbi, to appreciate in its exchange rate  reports;  however  the  Chinese  authorities  have  been  firmly maintaining  their  own stance on this disputed issue. 

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1.2 Rationale of the Present Study

The  attempt  to  conduct  the  research  on  the  US  Treasury  reports  within  the three-dimensional  framework proposed  by  Norman  Fairclough  is  motivated  by  the following considerations. 

First and foremost, CDA research has been widely conductedin a broader domain of discourse  analysis  in  recent years, yet  very  rare  researches  have  been  done  on  such types  of  data  as  governmental  reports,  especially  on financial  and  economic  issues. Since the day on which CDA was born, many scholars in this field have made critical discourse  analysis  of  various  kinds  of  discourse,  which  contributes  a  lot  to  the development of CDA, both theoretically and practically. Most previous studies on CDA have been focusing on such discourse as political figures’ speeches, news reports, and advertising texts, etc. One of the major reasons for this phenomenon is that economic and financial discourse is generally deemed as being more objective, unbiased and less inclined to be loaded with ideological messages and values, yet that is not always the case.  In  fact,  as  a  kind  of  discursive  practice  which  is  more and more  utilized  by governments  to  establish  and  consolidate  their  discursive  power,  economic  discourse can be laden with ideologies and values as well. Hence, a critical discourse analysis of such types of data becomes a necessity. 

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CHAPTER 2  LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Overview

Critical discourse analysis, namely CDA, is an analytical framework that is employed to investigate  how  various  types  of texts  and  discourses  contribute  to  different  kinds  of inequalities,  hidden  ideological  messages  and  power relations. Critical  discourse analysis,  as  the  name  indicates,  can  be  considered  as  one  mode  of  discourse  analysis, but unlike some fields of language study, for instance, conversational analysis, critical discourse  analysis  does  not  restrict its  focus  on  spoken  interaction.  In  CDA,  the  term discourse is used in a broad sense to encompass all the aspects of language that help to shape our social reality. It is something that is always embedded within a social context and which has a history (Wodak, 1996). Discourse, then, can be spoken, for example, public  speeches,  debates  between andidates  for  public  office,  private  conversations between citizens, and it can also refer to written texts such as letters to the editor, book titles, novels, poems, and governmental documents, etc. All of these forms of discourse contain discursive acts that are subject to analysis. Accordingto van Dijk (1998), CDA is a field that is concerned with studying and analyzing written texts and spoken words to reveal the discursive sources of power, dominance, inequality, and bias and how these sources  are  initiated,  maintained,  reproduced,  and  transformed  within  specific  social, economic, political, and historical contexts. Systemic-functional linguistics is the major methodological source of CDA which sees discourse as social practice and hence pays special  attention  to  the  study  of  the  social  and  ideological  factors its production, distribution and interpretation. Its aim of analysis is mainly to identify and analyze the ideological assumptions embedded in a text that have largely been taken for granted and bring them to the surface for reinspection. 

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2.2 Previous Studies on CDA

In the late 1970s, Critical Linguistics, i.e. CL, was initiated by a group of linguists and literary theorists at the University of East Anglia (Fowler, R., Hodge, R., Kress, G. & Trew, T., 1979). The theoretical basis and analytical frameworks they drew upon were mainly  from  Michael  Halliday’s  Systemic  Functional  Linguistics  (SFL).  CL practitioners  such  as Trew  (1979)  aimed  at  “isolating  ideology  in  discourse”  and “demonstrating  how  ideology  and  ideological  processes  are manifested  as  systems  of linguistic  characteristics  and  processes”.  This  aim  was  pursued  by  developing  CL’s research tools based on SFL (Fowler, 1979). 

Following Halliday, these pioneers in the domain of Critical Linguistics see language use  as  simultaneously  performing three  functions:  ideational  function,  interpersonal function  and  textual  function,  which  are  widely  known  as  the three  metafunctions  of language. According to Fairclough (1995), whereas the ideational function refers to the experience of the speakers of the world and its phenomena, the interpersonal function embodies the insertion of speakers’ own attitudes and evaluations about the phenomena in question, and establishing a relationship between speakers and listeners. Instrumental to  these  two  functions  is  the  textual  function.  It  is  through  the  textual function  of language that speakers are able to produce texts that can be understood by listeners. It is an enabling function connecting discourse to the co-text and context in which it occurs.

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CHAPTER 3 ............... 17

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ............... 17

3.1 Working Definition of Ideology：Ideology as Naturalized Worldview .......... 17

3.2 Governmental Report as Discourse ................... 18

CHAPTER 4 .......... 33

A LINGUISTIC DESCRIPTION OF SAMPLED DATA .................... 33

4.1 Politico-economic Context of the Sampled Data ................... 33

4.2 Linguistic Features of the Sampled Data ................. 35

CHAPTER 5 ................ 43

CDA-BASED ANALYSIS OF THE US TREASURY EXCHANGE RATE REPORT .......... 43

5.1 Introduction ................ 43

5.2 Data Collection ............... 43

CHAPTER 5  CDA-BASED ANALYSIS OF THE US TREASURY EXCHANGE RATE REPORT

5.1 Introduction

This chapter will concentrate on data collection, methodology, research procedure and most importantly, the practical analysis of the data. The analysis will proceed at three levels, i.e. the text level, the discursive practice level and the social practice level, and the  theories  and  research  tools  presented  in  chapter  three  will  be  applied  in  the analytical process. 

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CHAPTER 6 CONCLUSION

6.1 Overview of the Present Study 

In  the  present  study,  based  on  Fairclough’s  three-dimensional  model  of  discourse analysis and Halliday’s systemic functional grammar, a critical discourse analysis of the Report  to  Congress  on  International  Economic  and  Exchange Rate  Policies  has  been carried out. In the practical analysis, lexical choice, overlexicalization and modality at the textual level, intertextuality at the discursive practice level, and political and cultural contexts  at  the  social  practice  level  are employed  as  devices  of  exposing  ideological messages embedded in the reports of various years.

After the detailed analysis of the reports at the three levels of text, discursive practice and social practice, answers to our research questions have now become available. The reports on China’s economic and exchange rate policies produced by the US Treasury are  by  no  means  value-free.  Through  lexical  choices,  overlexicalization,  modality choice, and choices in intertextuality, China’s economic and exchange rate policies are presented to the audience as distortionary and threatening, antagonistic to the interests of  its  neighboring  countries,  the  United  States  and  even  the  whole international community. 

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