Advanced English II (BFE19013)

Media Discourse Analysis I: What It Is and How to Do It

Instructor: Miao Zhang 張淼

What is “media discourse”?

Plain definition: the language of the media — news articles, interviews, broadcasts, podcasts — produced for an audience that is not in the room.

Public — made for everyone, not private
Manufactured — someone wrote, edited, and packaged it on purpose, with a purpose
On record — it leaves traces we can collect and study

Readers usually can’t talk back → the text is designed for you, not with you.

Why should we care about it?

Media don’t just report the world — they construct versions of it, choice by choice.
Because media discourse is manufactured, every word is a decision: this word, this quote, this number — and not the alternatives.
Those choices add up to how the public sees education, science, countries, people.

Media discourse analysis = looking closely at those choices and asking why.

How is media discourse analysis done?

Lens 1 — the text: the words themselves. Naming, describing, metaphors, numbers, grammar.
Lens 2 — the producer: who made this, for whom, and why. Outlet, genre, audience, purpose.
Lens 3 — what’s missing: who never gets to speak, which questions are never asked.

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)

Studying how power and ideology hide in everyday language — how texts represent people and events in ways that serve some interests more than others.

Lens 1 in detail: what to look for in the words

Naming — what do they call things? A “system”? A “machine”? Students as “products”? (Refugees as flood?)
Describing — adjectives and metaphors that carry evaluation: rigorous, overwhelming, race, engine.
Numbers — rankings, statistics, percentages. They feel objective — but someone chose which numbers to print.
Grammar — who acts and who suffers: “China is pouring resources” vs. “grants were frozen”.

Lens 2 in detail: who made this, for whom?

Every media text is oriented to a target audience — and shaped for them.

Genre signals it: a literary interview (book readers) vs. a news feature (general public, policymakers).
Register & tone adjust to the audience: personal storytelling vs. data and official voices.
O’Keeffe’s point: because the audience isn’t present, media design a relationship with them — friendly, alarming, authoritative.

Lens 2 in detail: who made this, for whom?

Ask of any article: who is this written for, and what is it trying to make them feel or do?

Lens 3 in detail: absences are evidence too

A text tells you not only what the world looks like, but what is not worth mentioning.

Who is quoted — and who never gets a voice?
Which inconvenient facts or viewpoints are simply absent?
If two “balanced” articles leave out opposite things, what does each audience never learn?

Lens 3 in detail: absences are evidence too

CDA’s core habit: account for absences as well as presences — why these choices, among all the alternatives?

A beginner’s CDA checklist: five questions

Naming — how are people and things called?
Describing — what qualities and attributes are attached to them?
Arguing — what reasons justify the view?
Viewpoint — whose voice and whose side does the text take?
Emphasizing / softening — what is (not) stressed, what is played down?

An example

The buzzwords reflecting the frustration of China’s young generation

The big insight?

Media don’t mirror reality — they build it, word by word, for a particular audience.

That is why we analyze media discourse.

Session 2

Survey + group CDA workshop

Our lab rats for today

Reading A — Peter Hessler (2024): Peter Hessler on China’s Evolving Education System.

Reading B — NPR (2026): How the U.S. is losing ground to China in university research.

Reading C - Wang Aihua, People’s Daily (2025): Beyond exams, China envisions versatile future for students.

Same broad topic: Chinese education and scientific research.

Pick any two of the three and analyze using the approach we just learned. Then compare your findings.

Step 1: The survey

In your group, carefully read the sourcees (the first one is an online interview):

What is each article’s topic and tone?
Who does it seem written for?
Which one interests your group most — and why?

Then claim your article (first come, first served — one group per article if possible).

Step 2: Group roles & ground rules

Facilitator — keeps the group moving through the worksheet
Recorder — writes down every finding and every disagreement
Presenter — delivers the report in Session 3
Everyone — a reader and a coder first

Golden rule: complete your own reading and notes before you discuss. Separate eyes first — shared conclusions second.

Step 3: The CDA worksheet

Naming: how are students, teachers, education, society called and categorised?
Describing: what adjectives, metaphors, evaluative words attach to them?
Arguing: what reasons justify the article’s view? (success, threat, tradition, fairness, freedom…)

Step 3: The CDA worksheet

Viewpoint: who speaks (quoted voices), whose side is the text on?
Emphasizing / softening: what is (not) stressed, what is hedged or played down?

Why CDA first, corpus later?

CDA teaches you to see the choices — naming, framing, absences. That skill comes first.
The risk of close reading alone: maybe you picked a weird example. Maybe it’s just this one article.
Corpus methods (weeks 4+) answer that: do these patterns repeat across hundreds of articles?

Today’s job: produce one solid, evidence-backed close reading. Scale comes next.

Session 3

Group presentations

Presentation format

Your report should cover:

The article — what it is, who it’s for
The construction — 1–2 DHA strategies, each with a quoted example
The absence — one thing the article makes hard to see
Your finding(s) (30 sec)

Listener’s task

While other groups present, note on your worksheet:

Which strategies keep recurring across articles? (naming? threat topos? numbers?)
Do the articles construct Chinese education/research differently — and can you link that to their audiences?
Which article would you want to fact-check or compare against a corpus?

After the talks: the pattern question

Discussion:

Same broad topic, different constructions. What explains the differences — facts, or audiences & purposes?
If you had 100 articles instead of 4, how would you check whether your pattern is real?

That question — “is it just this text, or a pattern?” — is exactly where corpus linguistics comes in next.

Wrap-up

Keywords in media discourse analysis (1/4)

Term	Plain meaning
Media discourse	Language of media, made for an absent audience (O’Keeffe)
Public / manufactured / on record	Its three properties — traceable, designed, open to study
Audience design	Shaping a text for its intended audience
Framing	The angle a text takes on an event (education as tradition vs. as race)

Keywords in media discourse analysis (2/4)

Term	Plain meaning
Stance	The attitude a text signals toward its topic
Representation	How a text builds a picture of people/events
Ideology	Values & interests hidden in those representations
Absence	What a text leaves out — evidence too

Keywords in media discourse analysis (3/4)

Term	Plain meaning
CDA	Critical Discourse Analysis — how power hides in language
DHA	Discourse–Historical Approach (Reisigl & Wodak) — our five questions
Nomination / referential	Strategy 1: naming
Predication	Strategy 2: describing
Topos / argumentation	Strategy 3: reasoning patterns (threat, success, fairness…)

Keywords in media discourse analysis (4/4)

Term	Plain meaning
Perspectivation	Strategy 4: viewpoint & voice
Intensification / mitigation	Strategy 5: stressing vs. softening
Corpus / keyness / collocation / concordance	Tools for pattern-checking at scale (Baker et al. 2008)