从互文性的角度分析新闻报道背后的意识形态(2)
1.2 Intertextuality and News
Ideology is a reflection of economic, political and social forms and the interest relationship between each other. It’s a social consciousness form. News is a reflection of the ideology. It is adversely influenced by ideology and again influences ideology. News discourse is one of the texts of the mass media, whose main function is to convey information, including the latest news reports of the events and people in print media, such as newspaper, network; also including the published events in radio and television (Xu Ya, 2002).
Intertextuality is a basic feature of discourse, and a miniature of the complicated social or political discourse. Its existence has its own specific textual meaning. Any text has multiple voices, and no one of them can be independent from each other. It represents different interest relationships and ideology forms. Therefore, intertextuality plays an important role in the construction of discourse, and the contents it quoted also reflect a lot of deeper meanings. The intertextuality using in news is in the service of the respective ideology. Different intertextuality discourses can realize different political and cultural purposes.
1.3 Purpose and Structure of This Paper
This article analyzes the reports of MH370 mission from the perspective of intertextuality in three large newspapers: China Daily, The Times and the New York Times, for exploring the ideology behind the news. The assay reveals how the news media express their views on a certain international events by selecting sources and forms of quoted words.
The contents of my assay include five chapters. Chapter One includes the introduction of intertextuality and it’s relation with news. In Chapter Two, it introduces the definition of ideology, and the relationship between news and ideology. The most important parts are Chapter Three and Chapter Four. Chapter Three concentrates on explaining “intertextuality”, including the definition of intertextuality, main theories of intertextuality, the classification of intertextuality and the relations between intertextuality and news ideology. After that, nine pieces of news are selected to analyze the reports of MH370 mission from the perspective of intertextuality in Chapter Four.
2 The Ideology
2.1 The Definition of Ideology
Ideology refers to the ideas, attitudes and opinions which are held by a group in a certain period and society. Lefevere (1992) points out that the ideology is a conceptual term, including a certain period and society’s attitudes and opinions, which control the behaviors of people, and are often constricted by publishing organizations (qt. in Zeng Wenxiong, 2011). Ideology is a reflection of economic, political and social forms and the interest relationship between each other. It’s a social consciousness form (Tao Yuquan, 1992) that reflects a certain class consciousness, and is in the service of a particular class interests.
But ideology has its relative independence in its huge backlash in political superstructure and economic base. So the function meaning of ideology is a profound topic that is worthy of studying. Ideology, as the ideological superstructure, has a distinct class nature, theoretical system and strong practicality. In a country, a political and economic society, and even foreign policies, it plays a huge role. This effect is the function of ideology, which is decided by the essence of ideology (Wang Yonggui, 2005). The basic function of ideology, which can be briefly stated as follows: for the establishment, consolidation and improvement of a particular form’s political superstructure and economic base, for the interests of its dependent class or nation. The ideology of ruling class goes to great lengths to maintain, consolidate and develop the vested economic foundation and state power, so as to maintain and develop the economic, political and spiritual interests of the ruling class (Tao Yuquan, 1992). A general sense of “function”, is only relative to the good effect playing out by its interdependence with the service object, but for the alien groups and classes, the “function” is opposite and changes into disclosure, criticism and disintegration on the contrary.