This document provides a theoretical background for a critical discourse analysis of CNN and BBC online news coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. It discusses critical discourse analysis and its history, focusing on how language encodes power and ideology. It also reviews studies of media news discourse and the role of systemic functional grammar in CDA. The document aims to analyze CNN and BBC coverage of the Olympics in terms of content, language features, and how meaning is construed based on theories of CDA.

1. Vietnam national university hanoi
College of foreign languages and international studies
Postgraduate department
NGUYỄN THU TRANG
A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF
CNN ONLINE AND BBC ONLINE NEWS
ON BEIJING OLYMPICS 2008
(PH¢N TÝCH DIÔN NG¤N PH£ PH¸N TIN TøC
TRUYÒN TH¤NG VÒ OLYMPICS B¾C KINH 2008
TR£N B¸O §IÖN Tö CNN Vµ BBC)
M.A. minor thesis
Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60 22 15
HANOI, 2009

2. iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...............................................................................................i
ABSTRACT......................................................................................................................ii
LIST OF TABLES ...........................................................................................................iii
Chapter I. Introduction...................................................................................................1
1.1. Rationale of the study ...............................................................................................1
1.2. Aims and objectives of the study..................................................................................2
1.3. Scope of the study.......................................................................................................2
1.4. Methods of the study...................................................................................................3
1.5. Design of the study ....................................................................................................3
Chapter II. Theoretical background...............................................................................
2.1. Critical Discourse Analysis .......................................................................................4
2.1.1. What is Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)? ................................................4
2.1.2. The history of CDA......................................................................................5
2.1.3. Critical, ideology and power.........................................................................7
2.2. A review of media news discourse studies ...................................................................8
2.3. Systematic functional grammar and its role in CDA..................................................10
Chapter III: A Critical Discourse Analysis of CNN Online and BBC Online News on
Beijing Olympics 2008.....................................................................................................
3.1. Content and presentation analysis ...........................................................................15
3.1.1. Highlighted topics .....................................................................................15
3.1.2. The use of pictures and videos ...................................................................18
3.2. Lexical analysis.......................................................................................................20
3.2.1. Use of neutral referring expressions for the event .......................................22
3.2.2. Use positive references to indicate the Games ............................................22
3.3. An analysis of two sample texts.................................................................................23

3. v
3.3.1. Syntactic structure analysis ........................................................................23
3.3.1.1 The use of transitive and intransitive sentences .............................23
3.3.1.2. The use of active and passive voices ............................................24
3.3.2. Cohesion....................................................................................................26
3.3.2.1. Conjunction .................................................................................27
3.3.2.2. Reference.....................................................................................30
3.3.3. Transitivity.................................................................................................32
Chapter IV. Conclusion ................................................................................................42
4.1. Conclusions.............................................................................................................42
4.2. Suggestions for further study ....................................................................................43
REFERENCES................................................................................................................44
APPENDICES ...................................................................................................................I

4. iii
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1. Summary of process types (adapted from Halliday, 1994)
Table 2: Topics focused in BBC online
Table 3: Topics focused in CNN online
Table 4: Wording of competition fields in headlines of BBC online and CNN online
Table 5. References to Olympics Beijing 2008 in BBC and CNN online
Table 6. Number of transitive and intransitive sentences in two sample texts
Table 7. Active and passive voices used in BBC and CNN texts
Table 8. Passive clauses found in the BBC article “Beijing bids farewell to Olympics”
Table 9. Passive clauses found in the CNN article “Grand spectacle closes Beijing’s
Olympics”
Table 10. Conjunctions used in BBC article “Beijing bids farewell to Olympics”
Table 11. Conjunctions used in “Grand spectacle closes Beijing’s Olympics” of CNN
Table 12. Referring words/phrases used in BBC article “Beijing bids farewell to
Olympics”
Table 13. Referring words/phrases used in “Grand spectacle closes Beijing’s Olympics” of
CNN
Table 14. Analysis of transitivity used in BBC text
Table 15. Analysis of transitivity used in CNN text
Table 16: Summary of transitivity analysis data

5. 1
Chapter I. Introduction
1.1. Rationale of the study
The Beijing Olympics 2008, which took place from the 8th August to 24th August 2008 in
China, is one of the most successful Olympic Games which won great approval from the
media world. With a total of 11,468 athletes from 204 countries and regions, about 100,000
Olympic volunteers, 400,000 city volunteers, and 1 million social volunteers, Beijing saw
the largest number of female athletes competing in the history of the Games.
As the NBC Universal assesses, the Beijing Olympics is the most-watched U.S. television
event of all time. More than 220 television agencies and over 25,000 journalists covered
the event. The IOC site logged 5 million clicks during the entire process of the Beijing
Games, whereas it logged 2.8 million clicks during the Athens Olympics.
More than 80 heads of states and governments participated in the opening ceremony of the
Beijing Games. About 80 percent of the people in China and about half of the people in the
United States and Europe watched the opening ceremony on television. This was a record
number. Few other events have received so much attention.
The closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics received wide coverage by most U.S.
media outlets, with many praising the Games as the most memorable summer Olympics. It
was described as "the most memorable Olympics ever."
In a piece titled "Truly exceptional Games," NBC said the Beijing Olympics made history
"in virtually every regard.‖ Beside, many U.S. media outlets heaped praises on the Chinese
volunteers at the Beijing Games; the Los Angeles Times praised the Chinese volunteers for
their friendliness and efficiency.
BBC (The British Broadcasting Corporation) and CNN (Cable News Network) are the
world's largest broadcasters which are very familiar with English users. BBC has bases or
correspondents in more than 200 countries and, as officially surveyed, is available to more
than 274 million households, though also possibly far more individual persons and groups
than surveys can gather, and it is the oldest surviving entity of its kind and is more widely
known internationally than any other news organization. As of June 2008, CNN is
available in over 93 million U.S. households. Broadcast coverage extends to over 890,000

6. 2
American hotel rooms, and the U.S broadcast is also shown in Canada. Globally, CNN
programming airs through CNN International, which can be seen by viewers in over 212
countries and territories.
While According to Alexa's Traffic Rank system, in July 2008 BBC Online was the 27th
most popular English Language website in the world, and the 46th most popular overall,
CNN.com is now one of the most popular news websites in the world.
Critical discourse analysis (CDA) has made the study of language into an interdisciplinary
tool. A great number of researchers with various backgrounds, including media criticism
use it. Most significantly, it offers the opportunity to adopt a social perspective in the
cross-cultural study of media texts. While most forms of discourse analysis "aim to
provide a better understanding of socio-cultural aspects of texts," CDA "aims to provide
accounts of the production, internal structure, and overall organization of texts." One
crucial difference is that CDA "aims to provide a critical dimension in its theoretical and
descriptive accounts of texts."
With all above reasons, the author has the temptation to carry out a study named: ―A
Critical Discourse Analysis of CNN Online and BBC Online News on Beijing Olympics
2008‖.
1.2. Aims and objectives of the study
The study aims at:
- Providing an analysis of CNN Online and BBC Online News on Beijing
Olympics 2008 in the light of Critical Discourse Analysis;
- Giving an illustration of CDA approach;
- Raising language users as well as newspaper readers‘ awareness of the power and
ideology of discourses.
1.3. Scope of the study
In critically analyzing CNN and BBC News on Beijing Olympics 2008, the author
concentrates only on the coverage in the CNN and BBC online, not the other kinds like
printed or radio news. Specifically, in this study, the writer particularly examines the
content and presentation of the articles, the use of word, grammar (transitive and

7. 3
intransitive sentences as well as active and passive voices). Besides, some cohesive devices
like conjunction and reference and transitivity are also factors of concerns in the thesis.
1.4. Methods of the study
In order to obtain the aims of the study, the following activities will be carried out:
In the first place, a literature review will be carried out to provide a theoretical background
for the study.
Then, a number of articles on BBC online and CNN online about Beijing Olympics will be
analyzed in the light of critical discourse analysis. The research method applied in this part
is both quantitative and qualitative.
The analysis will be made in terms of the content and presentation. Apart from that,
vocabulary, syntactic structure and cohesion are also analyzed.
From the analysis, a comparison between the news reported in the two newspapers will be
interpreted and analyzed.
1.5. Design of the study
The thesis is divided into 4 chapters:
Chapter I is the Introduction which provides the rationale, the aims, the methods and the
design of the study.
Chapter II naming Theoretical background first gives an overview of Critical Discourse
Analysis. In this part, the history of CDA and some aspects such as critical, ideology and
power are mentioned and analyzed. Then, it deals with media discourse studies and
systematic functional grammar.
Chapter III is entitled A Critical Discourse Analysis of CNN Online and BBC Online
News on Beijing Olympics 2008. This is the main focus of the thesis which provides and
discusses the main findings of the study.
Chapter IV is the Conclusion summarizing the main findings of the study, drawing
important conclusions and offers suggestions for further research.
Apart from these main parts, appendices and references are also included.

8. 4
Chapter II. Theoretical background
2.1. Critical Discourse Analysis
2.1.1. What is Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)?
Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is a type of discourse analytical research that primarily
studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced,
and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context. With such dissident
research, critical discourse analysts take explicit position, and thus want to understand,
expose, and ultimately resist social inequality. Some of the tenets of CDA can already be
found in the critical theory of the Frankfurt School before the Second World War (Agger
1992b). Its current focus on language and discourse was initiated with the "critical
linguistics" that emerged (mostly in the UK and Australia) at the end of the 1970s (Fowler
et al. 1979). CDA has also counterparts in "critical" developments in sociolinguistics,
psychology, and the social sciences, some already dating back to the early 1970s. As is the
case in these neighboring disciplines, CDA may be seen as a reaction against the dominant
formal (often "asocial" or "uncritical") paradigms of the 1960s and 1970s.
CDA is not so much a direction, school, or specialization next to the many other
"approaches" in discourse studies. Rather, it aims to offer a different "mode" or
"perspective" of theorizing, analysis, and application throughout the whole field. We may
find a more or less critical perspective in such diverse areas as pragmatics, conversation
analysis, narrative analysis, rhetoric, stylistics, sociolinguistics, ethnography, or media
analysis, among others.
Crucial for critical discourse analysts is the explicit awareness of their role in society.
Continuing a tradition that rejects the possibility of a "value-free" science, they argue that
science, and especially scholarly discourse, are inherently part of and influenced by social
structure, and produced in social interaction. Instead of denying or ignoring such a relation
between scholarship and society, they plead that such relations be studied and accounted
for in their own right, and that scholarly practices be based on such insights. Theory
formation, description, and explanation, also in discourse analysis, are socio-politically
"situated," whether we like it or not. Reflection on the role of scholars in society and the
polity thus becomes an inherent part of the discourse analytical enterprise. This may mean,

9. 5
among other things, which discourse analysts conduct researches in solidarity and
cooperation with dominated groups.
2.1.2. The history of CDA
In the late 1970s, Critical Linguistics (CL) was developed by a group of linguists and
literary theorists at the University of East Anglia (Fowler et. al., 1979; Kress & Hodge,
1979).
Their approach was based on Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). CL
practitioners such as Trew (1979a, p. 155) aimed at "isolating ideology in discourse" and
showing "how ideology and ideological processes are manifested as systems of linguistic
characteristics and processes." This aim was pursued by developing CL's analytical tools
(Fowler et al., 1979; Fowler, 1991) based on SFL.
Following Halliday, these CL practitioners view language in use as simultaneously
performing three functions: ideational, interpersonal, and textual functions. According to
Fowler (1991, p. 71), and Fairclough (1995b, p. 25), 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 are understood by
listeners. It is an enabling function connecting discourse to the co-text and con-text in
which it occurs.
Halliday's view of language as a "social act" is central to many of CDA's practitioners
(Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999; Fairclough, 1989, 1992, 1993, 1995b, 1995a; Fowler et
al., 1979; Fowler, 1991; Hodge & Kress, 1979). According to Fowler et al. (1979), CL,
like sociolinguistics, asserts that, "there are strong and pervasive connections between
linguistic structure and social structure" (p. 185). However, whereas in sociolinguistics
"the concepts 'language' and 'society' are divided…so that one is forced to talk of 'links
between the two'", for CL "language is an integral part of social process" (Fowler et al.,
1979, p. 189).

10. 6
Another central assumption of CDA and SFL is that speakers make choices regarding
vocabulary and grammar, and that these choices are consciously or unconsciously
"principled and systematic"(Fowler et al., 1979, p. 188). Thus choices are ideologically
based. According to Fowler et al. (1979), the "relation between form and content is not
arbitrary or conventional, but . . . form signifies content". In sum, language is a social act
and it is ideologically driven.
Further development of CDA
Over the years CL and what recently is more frequently referred to as CDA (Chouliaraki
& Fairclough, 1999; van Dijk, 1998a) has been further developed and broadened. Recent
work has raised some concerns with the earlier work in CL. Among the concerns was,
first, taking into consideration the role of audiences and their interpretations of discourse
possibly different from that of the discourse analyst. The second concern has called for
broadening the scope of analysis beyond the textual, extending it to the intertextual
analysis.
Fairclough (1995b) has raised both issues. He claims that the earliest work in CL did not
adequately focus on the "interpretive practices of audiences." In other words, he claims
that CL has, for the most part, assumed that the audiences interpret texts the same way the
analysts do. In a similar vein, commenting on Fowler (1991), Boyd-Barrett (1994) asserts
that there is "a tendency towards the classic fallacy of attributing particular 'readings' to
readers, or media 'effects,' solely on the basis of textual analysis‖.
The other issue put forward by Fairclough (1995b) is that while earlier contributions in CL
were very thorough in their grammatical and lexical analysis they were less attentive to the
intertextual analysis of texts: "the linguistic analysis is very much focused upon clauses,
with little attention to higher-level organization properties of whole texts". Despite raising
these issues with regards to earlier works in CL, Fairclough (1995b) inserts that "mention
of these limitations is not meant to minimize the achievement of critical linguistics--they
largely reflect shifts of focus and developments of theory in the past twenty years or so".
The "shifts of focus and developments of theory" which Fairclough (1995b) talks about,
however, have not resulted in the creation of a single theoretical framework. What is
known today as CDA, according to Bell & Garret (1998), "is best viewed as a shared

11. 7
perspective encompassing a range of approaches rather than as just one school". Also, van
Dijk (1998a) tells us that CDA "is not a specific direction of research" hence "it does not
have a unitary theoretical framework." But, van Dijk (1998a) asserts, "given the common
perspective and the general aims of CDA, we may also find overall conceptual and
theoretical frameworks that are closely related."
2.1.3. Critical, ideology and power
In order to have better knowledge of CDA as a new linguistic approach, some core notions,
such as ―Critical‖, ―ideology‖ and ―power‖ should be mentioned.
According to Fairclough, ―Critical is used in the special sense of aiming to show up
connections may be hidden from people – such as the connections between language,
power and ideology referred above them.‖
In Ruth Wodak‘s opinion, however, ―Critical‖ is understood as having distance to the data,
embedding the data in the social, taking a political stance explicitly, and a focus on self-
reflection as scholars doing research.
―Ideology‖ is among the most controversial concepts. For Thompson, ideology refers to
social forms and processes within which, and by means of which, symbolic forms circulate
in the social world. The study of ideology is, therefore, a study of ―the ways in which
meaning is constructed and conveyed by symbolic forms of various kinds‖.
According to Simpson, ideology is ―a mosaic of cultural assumptions, political beliefs and
institutional practices.
Kress (1990) stresses that the defined and delimited set of statements that constitute a
discourse are themselves expressive of, and organized by a specific ideology. Language,
therefore, can never appear by itself – it always appears as the representative of a system of
linguistic terms, which themselves reflect the prevailing discursive and ideological
systems.
For CDA, language is not powerful on its own – it gains power by the use powerful people
make of it.
Ruth Wodak states that: “Power is about relations of difference, and particularly about the
effects of differences in social structures. The constant unity of language and other social

12. 8
matters ensures that language is entwined in social power in a number of ways: language
indexes power, expresses power, is involved where there is contention over and a
challenge to power. Power does not derive from language, but language can be used to
challenge power, to subvert it, to alter distributions of power in the short and long term.”
2.2. A review of media news discourse studies
The undeniable power of the media has inspired many critical studies in many disciplines:
linguistics, semiotics, pragmatics, and discourse studies. Concerning media news discourse
studies, Teun van Dijk has a made great contributions. In his work ―Structures of News in
the Press‖, Van Dijk proposes an analytical framework for the structures of news discourse
in the press. He focuses on the global organization of news that is he dealed only with
news structures beyond the sentence level, such as thematic and schematic structure, and
ignored syntactic, semantic, stylistic or rhetorical features of sentences and sentential
connections. Similarly, he also neglects issues of graphical organization, such as lay-
out, and nonverbal properties of news, such as photographs. In other words, he is
concerned with macro phenomena, rather than with the micro-organization of news
discourse. Finally, he limits the discussion to news in the daily press, and do not analyze
TV- and radio news.
Many researchers analyze critical discourse in various newspapers‘ reports of a wide range
of social issues in different languages. Craig and Lee (1992), for example, study how US
newspaper report labor issues in South Korea and Poland with a view to discerning the
ideological framework of US international political reportage with a textual analysis. The
study indicates that while in the dispute of South Korea, US mainstream newspapers does
not focus on the issue and the demands of strikers, US newspapers provide readers on its
front page with breaking news about the strikes to the ‗crisis‖ of the whole Polish system.
Other researchers examine the way different newspapers report about particular political,
diplomatic or social issues of countries.
Peter Teo (2000) focuses on news reports relating to a Vietnamese gang in Australia whose
violent and drug-dealing activities have received publicity in two Sydney-based
newspapers: The Sydney Morning Herald and The Daily Telegraph. The analysis of these
reports adheres to the analytic paradigm of Critical Discourse Analysis and is undertaken

13. 9
in two stages. The first, a general characterization of the newspaper discourse, reveals
evidence of a systematic ‗othering' and stereotyping of the ethnic community by the ‗white'
majority. This is followed by a comparative analysis of two reports, which surfaces
evidence of a racist ideology manifest in an asymmetrical power discourse between the
(ethnic) law-breakers and the (white) law-enforcers. The study concludes with a discussion
to explain the evidence of `Racism in the News', which both reflects and reinforces the
marginalization of recent Vietnamese migrants into Australia
Different from above researchers, some other researchers take a multi-perspective view by
examining both international and domestic coverage of an event. For instance, in the study
―Intertextuality and national identity: discourse of national conflicts in daily newspapers in
the United States and China‖, Juan Li examines the effects of intertextuality on the
discursive construction of national identities in the press. It does so by comparing how two
daily newspapers in the United States and China employ specific discursive strategies to
construct national identities and positions in their discourse of two particular events that
represent moments of crisis and conflict in US—China relations. Focusing on discourse,
style, and genre, which are respectively associated with representational, identificational,
and actionable meanings of discourse (Fairclough, 2003), this study aims to show how
news texts draw on, echo, and bring together different intertextual resources realized in the
forms of discourses, styles, and genres, and how the circulations and combinations of these
intertextual relations in particular contexts construct specific understandings of national
identities and positions.
Another method that gains interests from researchers is analysis of a discourse written by a
well-known person. Nguyen Thi Thu Ha (2004) carried out a study ―Critical discourse
analysis of President Bush‘s ultimatum to President Saddam Hussein‖. The study
investigates the power and ideology hidden behind the discourse of President Bush‘s
ultimatum to President Saddam Hussein. The analysis consists of text description, the
relationship between the processes of the discourse and that between discourse processes
and social processes.
The reviewed studies only focus on newspapers reporting political, diplomatic or social
events. None of them have done any researches on a sport event that draws attention from

14. 10
all over the world as Beijing Olympics. Therefore, I hope that this study will contribute to
the diversification of critical discourse analysis.
2.3. Systematic functional grammar and its role in CDA
Systemic functional grammar (SFG) or systemic functional linguistics (SFL) is an
approach to language developed by Michael Halliday in the 1960s. It is part of a broad
social semiotic approach to language called systemic linguistics. The term "systemic" here
refers to the view of language as "a network of systems, or interrelated sets of options for
making meaning"; The term "functional" shows that the approach is concerned with
meaning rather than word classes as formal grammar.
SFG is concerned primarily with the choices the grammar makes available to speakers and
writers. These choices relate speakers' and writers' intentions to the concrete forms of a
language. Traditionally the "choices" are viewed in terms of either the content or the
structure of the language used. In SFG, language is analyzed in three different ways
(strata): semantics, phonology, and lexico-grammar. SFG presents a view of language in
terms of both structure (grammar) and words (lexis). The term "lexico-grammar" describes
this combined approach.
Metafunctions
As far as SFG is concerned, functional bases of grammatical phenomena are divided into
three broad areas, called metafunctions: the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual.
Written and spoken texts can be examined with respect to each of these metafunctions in
register analyses.
The ideational metafunction
There are two types of ideational: experiential and logical metafunctions. The first
metafunction organizes our experience and understanding of the world. It is the potential of
the language to construe figures with elements (such as screen shots of a moving picture or
pictures of a comic novel) and its potential to differentiate these elements into processes,
the participants in these processes, and the circumstances in which the processes occur.
The later metafunction works above the experiential. It organizes our reasoning on the
basis of our experience. It is the potential of the language to construe logical links between
figures.

15. 11
Transitivity is a key component in the ideational metafunction. It provides us with the
potential to the infinite variety of occurrences into a finite set of process types including:
Material, Mental, Relational, Behavioral, Verbal and Existent Process. Table 1 below
summarizes these process types:
Table 1. Summary of process types
Process type Definition Category
meaning
Participants,
directly
involved
Example
1. Material
Processes of doing
things; express the
notion that some entity
―does‖ something,
which may be done
―to‖ some other entity
'doing'
Actor, (Goal)
Action 'doing' The boy hit the
dog
Event 'happening' The mayor
resigned
2. Behavioral
Processes of (typically
human) physiological
and psychological
behavior like
breathing, coughing,
dreaming, staring
'behaving'
Behaver,
Phenomenon
He stared at me
3. Mental:
A kind of activity in
people‘s mind,
requires a conscious
participant
'sensing' Senser,
Phenomenon
Perception 'seeing' I hadn‘t noticed
that

16. 12
Affection 'feeling' The boy loved
the girl
Cognition 'thinking' She didn‘t
believe her
husband
4. Verbal
Processes of saying
'saying'
Sayer, Target,
Recipient
John told me the
truth
5. Relational: Processes of ―being‖,
―being at‖ and
―having‖
‗Being‘
Attribution 'attributing' Carrier,
Attribute
She is kind-
hearted
Identification 'identifying' Identified,
Identifier;
Token, Value
Tom is the leader
Possession ―having‖ Possessor,
possessed
I have a daughter
6. Existential
Processes of
―existing‖ or
―happening‖
'existing' Existent
There was a
storm
The interpersonal metafunction
The interpersonal metafunction relates to a text's aspects of tenor or interactivity. Like
field, tenor comprises three component areas: the speaker/writer persona, social distance,
and relative social status. Social distance and relative social status are applicable only to
spoken texts. Note - this is not so, looking at the text of O´Halloran we are told that we no
longer have the option to contrast the various speakers but we can examine "how the
individual authors present themselves to the reader", therefore, we are able to look at social
distance and relative social status in texts where there is only one author.

17. 13
The speaker/writer persona concerns the stance, personalization and standing of the
speaker or writer. This involves looking at whether the writer or speaker has a neutral
attitude, which can be seen through the use of positive or negative language. Social
distance means how close the speakers are, e.g. how the use of nicknames shows the
degree to which they are intimate. Relative social status asks whether they are equal in
terms of power and knowledge on a subject, for example, the relationship between a
mother and child would be considered unequal. Focuses here are on speech acts (e.g.
whether one person tends to ask questions and the other speaker tends to answer), who
chooses the topic, turn management, and how capable both speakers are of evaluating the
subject.
The textual metafunction
The textual metafunction relates to mode; the internal organization and communicative
nature of a text. This comprises textual interactivity, spontaneity and communicative
distance.
Textual interactivity is examined with reference to disfluencies such as hesitators, pauses
and repetitions.
Spontaneity is determined through a focus on lexical density, grammatical complexity,
coordination (how clauses are linked together) and the use of nominal groups. The study of
communicative distance involves looking at a text‘s cohesion—that is, how it hangs
together, as well as any abstract language it uses.
Cohesion is analyzed in the context of lexical and grammatical as well as intonational
aspects with reference to lexical chains and, in the speech register, tonality, tonicity, and
tone. The lexical aspect focuses on sense relations and lexical repetitions, while the
grammatical aspect looks at repetition of meaning shown through reference, substitution
and ellipsis, as well as the role of linking adverbials.
Systemic functional grammar deals with all of these areas of meaning equally within the
grammatical system itself.
Among all this variety and heterogeneity of methods, SFL has traditionally provided the
analytical tools for a large extent of critical discourse analysis since it was first developed
in the decade of the 70‘s. The main reason is that Halliday and functional linguistics in

18. 14
general regard language as a societal phenomenon and thus study it in relation to its use in
society (Halliday, 1994). As such, it establishes the relationship between grammatical
structures of language and their context of use. Thus, with such a conception of language,
SFL provides the appropriate grounds for the kind of linguistic analysis the critical
discourse analyst intends to carry out. Systemic functional categories have been present in
the analysis of CDA since its early stages in works such as Fowler, Kress, Hodge and Trew
(1979), Fairclough (1989), and Fowler (1996). More recently, some authors have offered a
review of works that both analytically and theoretically illustrate this CDA-SFL
connection. Furthermore, as Renkema (2004) has suggested, a Hallidayan approach to
CDA is an attempt to carry it out in a more systematic way, so as to counter the criticism of
vagueness and lack of objectivity that this discipline usually encounters. Tran Huu Manh
(2007) suggests at the use of the formula to generalize the total meaning of the sentence (in
Vietnamese)
M sent = f [St + comp (RIT)] (Tran Huu Manh 2007, p269)
(Meaning of the sentence = function of [Structure (i.e. semantic structure) +
compositionality (Representational + Interpersonal + Textual)].
He emphasizes the use of + compositionality in counting the meaning of the sentence (with
added cultural values) among the total meaning of text which is very crucial to CDA in
general.
Hence, one of the strengths of applying a SFL analysis to CDA is that its detailed and
rigorous analysis of texts helps to preserve the interpretation from ideological bias.
In short, this chapter reviews the theories of CDA, different media news discourse studies
and provides some features of systematic functional grammar and its role in CDA. This
creates a background for the main part of the study that is chapter III.

19. 15
Chapter III: A Critical Discourse Analysis of CNN Online and
BBC Online News on Beijing Olympics 2008
3.1. Content and presentation analysis
3.1.1. Highlighted topics
In this part, the author investigates the focused topics found in both BBC and CNN
online. Table 2 and table 3 illustrate these topics.
Table 2: Topics focused in BBC online
No. Topics
1 Results
2 Medals table
3 Olympics map
4 Team Great Britain
5 29 Competition sports: archery, athletics, badminton, baseball, basketball,
boxing, canoeing, cycling, diving, equestrian, fencing, football, gymnastics,
handball, hockey, judo, modern pentathlon, rowing, sailing, shooting, softball,
swimming, table tennis, taekwondo, tennis, triathlon, volleyball, weightlifting,
wrestling
6 Paralympics
7 Six athletes heading to the Games despite huge obstacles

20. 16
Table 3: Topics focused in BBC and CNN online
No. Topics and subtopics
1 Schedules and results (by sport and by date)
2 Athletes (by name, by nation, by sport);
3 Medal tracker (2008 totals, historic totals)
4 SI photos (photo galleries, photos by sport)
5 Daily highlights
6 Everyday people preparing for the 2008 Summer Games
7 Monetary issue
8 Olympic social, cultural calendar
From above tables, it can be pointed out that both two newspapers focus on the results, the
medals awarded, the successful athletes and development of sport competition fields. On
BBC online, readers can also find information on Team Great Britain and Paralympics
while on CNN there are clear parts providing updated news about SI photos, logistics
issues such as everyday people preparing for the 2008 Summer Games, and monetary issue
as well as the host nation and the list of athletes.
In addition, on the front page on the Olympic Games, both e-newspapers highlight the
closing ceremony of the Olympics Games; and many have videos on the Games.
Regarding competition fields, BBC have a greater number of headlines than CNN. This
does not include articles on schedule and results of the games.
From table 4, it can be seen that all the headlines examined in the two newspapers are short
and clear. Most of the headlines highlight medal winner athletes as well as medal winner
countries.

21. 17
Table 4: Wording of competition fields in headlines of BBC online and CNN online
BBC online CNN online
Federer and Nadal make last eight Federer and Williams sisters crash out
Nadal to face Gonzalez in final Federer, Nadal and Djokovic cruise through
US star regain basketball gold Spanish Olympic basketball team in 'racist'
photo row
China pick up seventh diving gold Host nation maintain diving dominance
Phelps breaks Olympic gold record Endorsements pure gold for Phelps
Collins leaves UK athletic post UK sprinter fails in bid to beat Beijing ban
Frodeno claims gold as Brits fade 'Blade Runner' keeps Olympic hope alive
Lin cruises to badminton success Olympic swimmer wouldn't let cancer dash his
dream
Phelps wins historic eighth gold Phelps on course with third gold medal
Bolt grabs third gold and record Bolt and Powell primed for 100 meters clash
Nadal beats Gonzalez to take gold Top seed Nadal overpowers Troicki
Spitz takes mountain biking gold Absalon and Spitz claim mountain bike glory
Russia claim surprise relay gold Bolt helps Jamaica smash world relay record
Snowsill storms to triathlon gold Australia wins gold, bronze in women's triathlon
Argentina brave heat to take gold Five-a-side: The 'beautiful game' at the Games

22. 18
Closely examining the headlines, it is noted that both media agencies sometimes use
positive words (adjectives, nouns and verbs) to judge. While BBC uses the words
―cruises‖, ―storms‖, ―brave‖, ―historic‖, ―surprise‖, CNN prefers ―top seed‖, ―smash‖,
―overpowers‖, ―beautiful game‖, ―glory‖ to show their praise for success of the athletes
and the games.
Most of the examined headlines formed a simple sentence of structure SVO. However,
CNN has some noun phrases as its headlines, such as: ―Spanish Olympic basketball team
in 'racist' photo row‖, ―Phelps on course with third gold medal‖, ―Endorsements pure gold for
Phelps‖. Withthese headlines, CNN would like to focusonthe actors, not the actions.
From above analysis, we can see that both newspapers devote many columns to praise success of
athletes and countries that win in competitions.
3.1.2. The use of pictures and videos:
Both BBC and CNN use pictures to demonstrate their desired contents. For example, when
studying coverage on swimming in the two newspapers, we can find that CNN put pictures
highlighting the number of medals Michael Phelps grab and the swimmer‘s happiness
when winning the competition. By adding the pictures, writer‘s respect to the greatest
swimmer as well as one of the greatest Olympians of all time is highly emphasized.
Picture 1: Michael Phelps is one medal away from holding
the record for the most gold medals in Olympic history.
(CNN, August 12, 2008, on ―Phelps dives into Olympic history‖)

23. 19
Picture 2: Left to right: Brendan Hansen, Aaron Piersol
and Michael Phelps celebrate Sunday's historic win.
(CNN, August 18, 2008, ―Phelps wins historic eight gold medals‖)
BBC, however, chose 8 pictures of Phelps holding gold medals. These pictures show both
historic records of the ―US swimming legend‖ and his happiness of winning competitions.
(see picture 3)
Picture 3: US swimming star Michael Phelps has broken Mark Spitz's
36-year-old record of seven gold medals in a single Olympic Games.
(BBC, Saturday 16 August 2008, ―Phelps‘ eight steps to greatness‖)
The writer‘s implication is that Phelps has made international titles and record breaking
performances have helped him become the award professional collectors. This reminds
readers of the awards that he earned including World Swimmer of the Year Award in 2003,
2004, 2006, 2007, and 2008 and American Swimmer of the Year Award in 2001, 2002,

24. 20
2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, and 2008. He has won a total of fifty-four career medals thus far
in major international competition, forty-five gold, seven silver, and two bronze spanning
the Olympics, the World, and the Pan Pacific Championships.
Besides, BBC also provided some video clips to better illustrate Phelps‘s success. With
these videos, the British institution seems to better visualize the extraordinary
achievements of the US swimmer than CNN. Readers can watch how medal was earned as
well as the way the medal holder celebrates his winning.
3.2. Lexical analysis
In this part, references to Olympics Beijing 2008 in the two e-newspapers BBC and CNN
will be investigated. Table 5 below illustrates different referring expressions used in
different articles of the two newspapers:
Table 5. References to Olympics Beijing 2008 BBC and CNN online
No. BBC online CNN online
Referring
expressions
Cited in the
article
Referring
expressions
Cited in the
article
1. One of the best
organized Games
in history
Beijing bids
farewell to
Olympics
The games in
Beijing
Iraq cleared to
compete in
Summer
Olympics
2. The 29th
Games of
the modern
Olympiad
Beijing bids
farewell to
Olympics
The Beijing
Games
Grand spectacle
close Beijing‘s
Olympics
3. The Beijing
Games
Beijing bids
farewell to
Olympics
The Summer
Games
Emotion kicks
off China's
Olympics
4. The Olympics Beijing bids The 2008 Emotion kicks

25. 21
farewell to
Olympics
Olympic Games off China's
Olympics
5. The sporting
action
Beijing bids
farewell to
Olympics
The 29th
Olympic
Games
Olympic show
opens with a
bang, 8 August
2008
6. Sixteen days of
action, starring
10,000 athletes
from 204 nations
Organizers hail
'glorious' Games
The Summer
Olympics
Olympic show
opens with a
bang, 8 August
2008
7. 16 glorious days Organizers hail
'glorious' Games
The race Back home:
Memories of a
golden adventure
8. The 2008 Games Organizers hail
'glorious' Games
The greatest
Olympics ever
Viewers react to
the Beijing
Olympics
9. This year‘s
summer Games
China Delighted
with Olympics,
24 August 2008
Next month's
Olympic Games
Iraq cleared to
compete in
Summer
Olympics
10. This particular
Games
China Delighted
with Olympics,
24 August 2008
Beijing‘s
Olympics
Grand spectacle
close Beijing‘s
Olympics
There are both similarities and differences in the use of expressions to refer to the
most unforgettable Olympic Games held in Beijing in the British and American press
organizations.
3.2.1. Use of neutral referring expressions for the event:
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26. 22
The two media agencies use different opinion-free references without any adjectives to
depict the Games. The expressions used in BBC include: ―The 29th
Games of the modern
Olympiad‖, ―The Beijing Games‖, ―The Olympics‖, ―The 2008 Games‖, ―The Summer
Olympics‖, ―The sporting action‖, ―This year‘s summer Games‖, while CNN‘s choices
are: ―Beijing‘s Olympics‖, ―The games in Beijing‖, ―The Beijing Games‖, ―The Summer
Games‖, ―The 2008 Olympic Games‖, ―The 29th
Olympic Games‖, ―The race‖, ―Next
month's Olympic Games‖. With these references, the authors have no intentions to judge,
they just would like to mention the Games as a normal sport event only.
3.2.2. Use positive references to indicate the Games:
In covering the Beijing Olympic Games, there are some referring expressions for the event
that were opinion-led, showing the media institutions‘ viewpoint explicitly. The table 5
suggests that more positive expressions referring to the sport games are used in BBC than
CNN (3 out of 10 references in BBC as compared with 1 out of 10 in CNN). In order to
provide readers with praise for the really successful Olympic Games, BBC and CNN add
some connotative expressions. For instance:
Thanks to the adjective ―particular‖ (in ―This particular Games‖), ―best organized‖ (in
―One of the best organized Games in history‖), ―starring‖ in ―Sixteen days of action,
starring 10,000 athletes from 204 nations‖, ―glorious‖ (in ―16 glorious days‖), The Britain-
based media agency refers Beijing Games to the Games that are really different from the
past, the one of the most successful Olympic Games which were best organized with the
attendance of thousands of athletes, the Games of success and glory.
CNN, however, uses the adjective ―greatest‖ (in ―The greatest Olympics ever‖) to describe
the event as the grand Games which are most-watched by viewers, the summer sport event
with exceptional opening and closing ceremonies.
By these references, it can also be implied that the media institutions highly appreciate
China for hosting one of the most memorable Olympic Games.
3.3. An analysis of two sample texts:
3.3.1. Syntactic structure analysis
3.3.1.1 The use of transitive and intransitive sentences
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27. 23
Examination of the transitive and intransitive sentences in the two sample texts: ―Beijing
bids farewell to Olympics‖ (BBC) and ―Grand spectacle closes Beijing‘s Olympics‖
(CNN) reveals a great similarity.
Table 6. Number of transitive and intransitive sentences in two sample texts
BBC article “Beijing bids
farewell to Olympics”
CNN “Grand spectacle
closes Beijing’s Olympics”
Number of
sentences
Percentage Number of
sentences
Percentage
Transitive sentences 7 31.818% 6 28.572%
Intransitive sentences 15 68.182% 15 71.428%
Total 22 100% 21 100%
The table shows that both media institutions use far more intransitive sentences than
transitive sentences. The number of transitive sentences in BBC article is 7 out of 22,
accounting for 31.818%, while CNN‘s indicator is 6 out of 21, making up 28.572%.
Closer exploring intransitive form, we can find that in the article ―Beijing bids farewell to
Olympics‖, intransitive clauses are used to show reporters‘ attitude. Let take some
sentences as an example:
- ―The Olympic games have drawn to a close with a glittering ceremony inside
Beijing‘s Bird‘s Nest Stadium‖.
- ―Beijing‘s dramatic farewell to the 29th Games of the modern Olympiad got under
way with a magnificent firework display, which quickly segued into an amazing
display of dancing and drumming‖.
- ―It was a more celebratory affair, as exuberant athletes, dancers and musicians got
into the party spirit‖.
In these sentences, no objectives are mentioned. The writer just wants to highlight the
things happening. Some prepositional phrases (the 2 former example sentences) and
subordinate clause (the last sentence in above example) are added after the intransitive
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