Ngôn ngữ sử dụng ở cấp độ từ vựng trong các bài báo viết về sự cố máy bay mh370 trên báo lá cải và báo phổ thông từ góc độ phân tích diến ngôn phê phán

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES LÊ THỊ NGỌC HÀ LANGUAGE USAGE AT LEXICAL LEVEL IN ARTICLES ABOUT MA

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220201

HANOI – 2017

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

LÊ THỊ NGỌC HÀ

LANGUAGE USAGE AT LEXICAL LEVEL IN ARTICLES ABOUT MALAYSIA AIRLINES FLIGHT 370 IN TABLOID AND BROADSHEET NEWSPAPERS – CRITICAL DISCOURSE

ANALYSIS

NGÔN NGỮ SỬ DỤNG Ở CẤP ĐỘ TỪ VỰNG TRONG CÁC BÀI BÁO VIẾT VỀ SỰ CỐ MÁY BAY MH370 TRÊN BÁO LÁ CẢI VÀ BÁO PHỔ THÔNG TỪ GÓC ĐỘ PHÂN TÍCH DIẾN NGÔN PHÊ PHÁN

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220201

Supervisor: Dr Hà Cẩm Tâm

HANOI - 2017

DECLARATION

I hereby declare that the thesis, entitled “Language Usage At Lexical Level In Articles About Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 In Tabloid And Broadsheet Newspapers – Critical Discourse Analysis” has been carried out in partial

fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Art at the University of Languages and International Studies This work is original and all the sources that I have used or quoted have been indicated and acknowledged by means of complete references

Hanoi, December 2017

Lê Thị Ngọc Hà

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This thesis would not be fulfilled without the help of many people, and I would like

to show my heartfelt thanks to everyone who has taught, inspired, challenged and supported me throughout the realization of this thesis

I would like to express sincere gratitude towards my supervisor, Dr Ha Cam Tam, for her profound and invaluable guidance without which this study would not be completed I also would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to all the lecturers and staffs at the Faculty of Post-graduate Studies, the University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University of Hanoi whose support and consideration has enabled me to pursue the course

Hanoi, December 2017

Lê Thị Ngọc Hà

ABSTRACT

The missing aircraft MH370 is a tragedy that shocked the nation of Malaysia and the whole world The media plays a big role in compressing the incident into a segment of the newspaper to attract readers‘ attention towards the shocking news News reported by the media affected in the way how the readers view the incident This study is a critical discourse analysis of two UK online news agents on the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 from March 8, 2014 to May 8,

2014 A critical discourse analysis was made to portray the representations of lexical items from two different types of newspaper – broadsheet and tabloid With the purpose of discerning the underlying opinions and attitudes of the reporters, Van Dijk‘s Semantic Discourse Analysis was used to analyze the news reports The study just focused on the choices of Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives and the use of metaphors The researcher made an attempt to illustrate the relationship between language usage and underlying ideas that the writers may want to convey

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Abbreviation Meaning

CDA

T

M

Critical Discourse Analysis The Telegraph

The Mirror

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Figure 1: Most frequent Nouns in The Telegraph‘s articles 24

Figure 2: Most frequent Nouns in The Mirror‘s articles 24

Figure 3: Most frequent Verbs in The Telegraph‘s articles 25

Figure 4: Most frequent Verbs in The Mirror‘s articles 25

Figure 5: Most frequent Adjectives in The Telegraph‘s articles 26

Figure 6: Most frequent Adjectives in The Mirror‘s articles 26

Table 1: The description of event presented in both newspapers 27

Table 2: The possibility of terrorism presented in both newspapers 32

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iv

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS v

PART A INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale of the research 1

2 Scope of the research 2

3 Objectives of the research 3

4 Research questions 3

5 Significance of the study 4

6 Research methodology 4

7 Organization of the research 4

PART B DEVELOPMENT 6

CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 6

1.1 An overview of Critical Discourse Analysis 6

1.2 Van Dijk‘s socio-cognitive approach to CDA 8

1.3 Van Dijk‘s Semantic Discourse Analysis 10

1.4 Critical Analysis of News Discourse 14

1.5 Language of broadsheet newspapers and tabloid newspapers 15

1.6 Reviews of related studies 16

CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY 19

2.1 Research questions 19

2.2 Background information of the data 19

2.3 Data collection 20

Data collection procedure 21

2.5 Research method 21

2.6 Data analysis procedure 22

CHAPTER III: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 23

3.1 Lexical choices 23

3.1.1 Choice of positive words 27

3.1.2 Choice of negative words 28

3.2 Metaphorical expressions 35

3.2.1 Positive expressions 35

3.2.2 Negative expressions 36

PART C CONCLUSION 39

1 Recapitulation 39

2 Limitations of the study 41

3 Recommendations for further studies 42

REFERENCES 43 APPENDICES I Appendix 1: List of articles from The Telegraph I Appendix 2: List of articles from The Mirror I Appendix 3: A sample of analyzed articles II

PART A INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the research

Media is a modern tool that is used by people to gain information The use of media in collecting information on what is happening around the world has also play its role in shaping the perspective of readers regarding the events that the media is reporting The media have been described as powerful sites for the production and circulation of social meanings The thought and perspective of the readers can be shaped by the construction of thought through the use of language Media play its role as perspective shaper through the hand of journalists by the grammatical construction, selecting the choice

of words and the meanings conveyed within the metaphorical text

One of media tools is newspaper Newspaper, or news, in which the medium that people mainly receive their information from is ―Anything that's interesting, that relates to what's happening in the world, what's happening in areas of the culture that would be of interest to your audience,‖ (Kurt Loder, 1945) However, there are at times different versions of the same event are presented in a wide array of news sources, leaving room for doubt about the value-free and unbiased information journalists provide for news readers According to Fowler (1991), language of the press is never neutral, and news reports are laden with values and ideologies The power of media can influence people‘s cognition and form people‘s attitudes and ideologies Accordingly, in order to understand the true nature of news reports, namely the social and power relationship, the hidden ideologies, and the way they present people and issues, it is necessary for a language user to be critical in their state of mind

The incident of the missing airplane MH370 made the incident a newsworthy that had followers from different parts of the world Unlike any other airplane accidents that had happened in other countries before, MH370 had been facing the world watchers that were following the updates relating to the missing aircraft Readers and commentators, and different groups of audiences that followed the news of the tragedy were anxiously waiting for the result of the missing airplane

The involvement of foreign military and search team in the effort to find the missing aircraft attracted the attention of observers around the world The attention gained from people around the globe regarding the missing airplane

of MH370 created speculations of both positive and negative perspective about the incident The perspective were varies from positive, neutral stand to negative opinions about the cause and effect of the missing airplanes towards both Malaysia and the whole world history as well

As a results, news reporters make use of their word choices to describe and inform the world readers about the missing of MH370 airplane The researcher attempted to conduct a study on the features of lexical items, which are expressed through lexical choices and metaphors, used in the news reports that discussed the disappearance of the flight MH370 from the viewpoint of two different kinds of newspaper, namely broadsheet and tabloid, under the light of critical discourse analysis to explore how ideologies of the media institutions construct their representation of reality to their readers

2 Scope of the research

This research focused on uncovering the differences in the underlying opinions and attitudes of writers between broadsheet newspaper and tabloid newspaper when reporting the same event through the choice of three lexical

items, namely Nouns, Verbs and Adjectives In addition, this research also investigated the connection between metaphorical expressions and their meanings, which also played an important role in revealing the attitudes of the writers

The analysis of data was undertaken via semantics theory of Van Dijk In terms of lexical styles, this study paid attention to the words which carry positive or negative meaning With regard to metaphors, this study attempted

to discover their properties which can help to show the writers‘ opinions Data for this research was taken from twenty online news articles on the missing flight MH370 which were published on two newspaper agents, namely The Telegraph – representative of broadsheet newspaper – and The Mirror – representative of tabloid newspaper The period of time, from March

8th 2014 to May 8th 2014, was chosen as it attracted remarkable attention from the media and had a wide range of news articles relating to the event

3 Objectives of the research

The study aims at:

- Investigate the lexical choices of Nouns, Verbs and Adjectives and metaphorical expressions utilized in the articles taken from two different kinds of newspaper, namely broadsheet and tabloid, regarding the disappearance of the flight MH370

- Uncover the attitudes and opinions of the writers when discussing the same event by their choice of words

4 Research questions

(1) How is the disappearance of Malaysian Airline Flight MH370 portrayed in tabloid and broadsheet newspapers by means of lexical choices (Nouns, Verbs and Adjectives)?

(2) How can the use of metaphorical expressions reveal the writers‘ opinion and attitude underlying in their writing?

5 Significance of the study

With regards to theoretical aspect, this study is expected to contribute to the field of CDA with its findings In terms of practical aspect, the researcher hopes to raise the awareness of readers towards any kinds of information that

is published on news reports

6 Research methodology

With the purpose of discerning the underlying ideologies of the reporters, Van Dijk‘s Semantic Discourse Analysis was applied to analyze the news articles Based on Van Dijk‘s structures of discourse analysis (1995b), lexical style and rhetorical figures were examined Lexical style dealt with the choice of positive and negative opinion words, and rhetoric figures indicated positive and negative properties

7 Organization of the research

The study consists of three parts They are:

Part A - Introduction - presents the rationale, scope, objectives, significance,

general methodology, and organization of the study

Part B - Development - constitutes the main part and consists of three

chapters

Chapter 1: Literature review

First, this chapter gives an overview of CDA Then Van Dijk‘s Semantic Discourse Analysis, Critical Analysis of News discourse, and Language of

broadsheet and tabloid newspapers Finally, the overview of related studies is also presented in the chapter

Chapter 2: Methodology and analytical procedures

This chapter presents the background to the event After that, the research approach, data collection, methodology and data analysis procedures are mentioned

Chapter 3: Findings and discussions

The findings are separated into two parts: one is to investigate lexical choices

in the selected news articles, the other is to examine the use of metaphors By means of analyzing these two aspects, the connection between opinions, attitudes of news reporters and their use of language can be revealed

Part C - Conclusion - summarizes the main findings of the study Then

suggestions for further research are offered

PART B DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter discusses linguistic theories consisting of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) The researcher also mentions the concept of Van Dijk‘s Semantic Discourse Analysis, Critical Analysis of News discourse, and Language of broadsheet and tabloid newspapers Additionally, it provides the previous related studies from research experts around the world

1.1 An overview of Critical Discourse Analysis

Critical Discourse Analysis (hereby referred as CDA) is a type of discourse analysis that focuses on the influence of language on society Language is believed to have power in both written and spoken forms CDA views language as a means of ideology and linguistic activities as social practices

By analyzing different aspects of discourse, the relationship among language, power and ideology can be revealed

Theoretical base of CDA can be divided into 4 stages of development The very first concept of CDA was introduced in the book ―Language and Control‖

by Fowler et al (1979) However, the following stage witnessed no further development during the period of 1979 and 1985 Next comes the stage of self-reflection with Kress‘s1 and Fowler‘s2 works published between 1985 and

1987 From 1988 up to now, many other linguistic experts dug deep to this potential field, such as Norman Fairclough, Ruth Wodak, Van Dijk, etc

According to Huston (2002), CDA portrays the roles of language, which are

―forming and transmitting assumptions about what the world is and should be like‖ and ―maintaining or challenging existing power relations‖ In other

words, it is related to the mediation of ideology in language, as well as the structures of power in a society

Fairclough viewed language as a social semiotic which is mediated by social circumstances systematically and as the reflection of social structures and social practices On the contrary, language also has influence on the society

by shaping, retaining or changing social relations Hence, CDA aims at investigating the correlation between social variables and the composition of discourse and revealing the hidden ideologies pertaining to power relations The relation between language and society is regarded to be a two-way process, in which texts are ―socially generated‖, ―socially transmitted‖ and

―unequally distributed‖ (Fairclough, 1989) He also added by means of CDA, discourse analysis aims to ―investigate how social practices, events and texts arise out of and ideologically shaped by relations of power and struggles over power‖ and ―to explore how the opacity of these relationships between discourse and society is itself a factor securing power and hegemony‖ (Fairclough, 2001)

Other scholars such as Van Dijk, Wodak, Meyer and Coulthard shared the same idea with Fairclough From the viewpoint of Wodak and Meyer, language is also a medium of domination and social force It serves to legitimize relations of organized power in so far as the legitimating of power relations is not articulated, so the goal of Critical Linguistics is to uncover ideology deemed implicit in overt propositions As for Van Dijk, CDA is regarded as ―an important diagnostic tool for the assessment of social and political dominance‖ Coulthard (1996) also commented CDA scholars felt that ―it is indeed part of their professional role to investigate, reveal and clarify how power and discriminatory value are inscribed in and mediated through the linguistic system‖ CDA is essentially political in intent with its

practitioners acting upon the world in order to transform it and thereby help create a world where people are not discriminated against because of sex, color, creed, age or social class

Obviously, CDA is fruitful in providing insights into the relationship between language and ideology Recent researches in this field have touched upon issues such like gender differences, racism, political power and so on This study uses CDA as a main theoretical framework in order to examine news discourse critically to see how this particular type of discourse can cause an impact on society

1.2 Van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach to CDA

Van Dijk is one of the leading figures and pioneers of study and research in CDA domain Most of his critical works are concerned with prejudice and racism in discourse In his early works, he studied about the way people referred to ethnic minorities, and the role these conversations play in the reproduction of ideology From his point of view, topics of conversation can represent speakers‘ thinking; and they are mental as well as personal tenets about ethnic events He believes that the major premise in talking about others includes positive self-representation and negative other-representation In other words, speakers of one group tend to represent themselves or their group in positive terms, while the other groups are described with negative terms

Van Dijk labelled his methodology of doing CDA as socio-cognitive discourse analysis, which studies about the relationship between discourse, cognition and society He viewed discourse as a ―complex communicative event that also embodies a social context, featuring participants (and their properties) as well as production and reception processes‖ (Van Dijk, 1998:3)

According to Van Dijk, social recognition plays an essential role in connecting discursive structures and social structures; controls the way people act, speak or write; and their understanding of other people‘s social practices (Van Dijk, 1995a)

Recently, in his latest researches, he attempted to clear up one widespread

misunderstanding of CDA is that it is a special method of doing discourse

analysis According to Van Dijk, being critical is a state of mind, an attitude, a way of dissenting, and many more things, but not an explicit method for the description of the structures or strategies of text and talk (Van Dijk, 2015) In other words, CDA is (any) Discourse Analysis of critical scholars, and hence CDA is rather a social or political movement than a method, and that kind of analysis should be adequate to realize their critical goals, namely to analyze and denounce domination and social inequality

As an analytical practice, CDA is not one direction of research among many others in the study of discourse Rather, it is ―a critical perspective that may

be found in all areas of discourse studies, such as discourse grammar, conversation analysis, discourse semantics, discourse pragmatics, rhetoric, stylistics, argumentation analysis, multimodal discourse analysis, etc.‖ (Van Dijk, 2015a:466)

A central notion in most of Van Dijk‘s critical work on discourse is that of

power, and more specifically the social power of groups or institutions He defined social power in terms of control (Van Dijk, 2008) A group have

(more or less) power if they are able to (more or less) control the acts and minds of (members of) other groups This ability presupposes a power base of privileged access to scarce social resources, such as force, money, status, fame, knowledge, information, culture or various forms of public discourse and communication These notions of discourse access and control are very

general, and it is one of the tasks of CDA to spell out these forms of power and especially their abuses – that is, forms of domination

Van Dijk also suggested that in order to understand and interpret discourse about specific events, for instance stories or news reports, it is necessary to comprehend the representation of events, actions or situation the discourse is about Specific discourse structures, such as topics, arguments, metaphor, lexical choice, and rhetorical figures may influence personal experiences of listeners/readers in ways preferred by the speakers/writers, as in most forms

of interaction and communication (Van Dijk, 2015a)

1.3 Van Dijk’s Semantic Discourse Analysis

According to Van Dijk (1985), semantics is ―a component theory within a larger semiotic theory about meaningful, symbolic, behavior‖ Probably, the most general concept used to denote the specific object of a semantic theory is the concept of interpretation Interpretations are processes or operations of assignment: to objects of kind X they assign objects of kind Y The objects of kind X to which we assign something are usually called expressions Thus words, or rather word forms (morphemes), and sentences, or rather sentence forms (syntactic structures), are objects of which interpretations are provided

in semantic theories What is assigned by operations of interpretations are typically semantic objects of various kinds A first semantic object of this kind is meaning Hence the interpretation of a discourse, as it is explicated in

a semantic theory of discourse, is the assignment of meaning(s) to the expressions of a discourse

The main aspect of semantic discourse analysis is to investigate how sequences of sentences of a discourse are related to sequences of underlying propositions and how the meaning of such sequences is a function of the

meaning of the constituent sentences or propositions At the same time, semantic discourse analysis has an extensional or referential dimension, which shows what sequences of sentences in a discourse can refer to

In Van Dijk‘s theory, textual meanings are analyzed at two different levels First is the well-known level of word, word group, clause, and sentence meanings as they are accounted for in linguistic, logical or psycholinguistic grammars or theories At this level, objects to be defined are, for example, conditions on meaningfulness or the referential interpretation of sentences, as well as relations of synonymy, entailment, implication or presupposition between sentences or propositions Besides this analysis of local-level meanings, discourses also have an important global dimension At this level, the focus shifts to overall meanings of whole texts or large text fragments, such as topics, themes and perspective, as well as overall schematic forms

It should be noted that abstract semantic analysis has important cognitive and social underpinnings After all, meaning and interpretation are not objective elements of the text itself but are assigned to it by language users in concrete communicative and social contexts This means that social knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and ideologies, as well as personal experiences, contribute to the actual representations of news reports by media users These representations

in turn determine (and are influenced by) so-called situation models in memory, which represent the ultimate subjective understanding of the events the text is about

Structures of Semantic Discourse Analysis

In order to comprehend the hidden ideologies in a discourse, it is essential to analyze the discourse structures According to Van Dijk (1995b:143), some of discourse structures are straightforward Since ideologies are the basis of social judgements, and ideologically controlled propositions often are opinion

statements, expressions of such opinions and attitudes will often indicate what ideological constraints are involved

The ideological semantics underlying in lexical selection follows a rather

clear strategic pattern, which is: ingroups and their members, as well as

friends, allies, or supporters, tend to be described in positive terms, whereas

outgroups, enemies or opponents are described in negative terms This is a

familiar finding in intergroup theory, theories of stereotyping and (other) social cognition research (Fiske and Taylor, 1991; Hamilton, 1991; Semin and Fiedler, 1992; Turner and Giles, 1981) That is, it is assumed that the mental representations of these groups in terms of attitude schemata and underlying ideologies will feature the overall evaluative concepts that also influence lexical This may not only show in Adjectives or Nouns used to describe ingroups and outgroups and their properties, but also in the complex structures that relate these groups with specific actions, objects, places, or events

In ‗Ideological Discourse Analysis‘, Van Dijk proposed the list of discourse

structures that are used to exhibit positive and negative judgements about

groups at different levels and dimensions of text and talk The list pointed out

that lexical style can be expressed by the choice of positive and negative opinion words, and rhetoric figures such as metaphors are used to emphasize positive and negative properties (Van Dijk, 1995b:145)

 Phonological structures (stress, pitch, volume, intonation) - graphical structures (headlines, bold characters)

 Overall ordering and size (first and later, higher and lower, bigger and smaller, primacy and recency)

 Syntactic structure (word order, topicalization, clausal relations: main and subordinate, fronted or embedded; split constructions)

 Semantic structures (explicit vs implicit, detail and level of description, semantic macrostructures vs details)

 Lexical style (positive vs negative opinion words)

 Rhetoric (under- and overstatement, euphemism - for positive/negative meanings, metaphor - emphasizing positive/negative properties, litotes, etc.)

 Schematic or superstructures (expressed or not in prominent conventional category, e.g., Headline or Conclusion; storytelling and argumentation)

 Pragmatic (assertion vs denial; self-congratulation vs accusation)

 Interactive (turn-taking: self-selection and dominance; topic maintenance and change; non-verbal communication: face, gestures, etc.)

List of discourse structures by Van Dijk (1995b:145)

In sum, language and discourse have a broad range of structural possibilities

to emphasize and de-emphasize information and hence also the ideologically controlled opinions about ingroups and outgroups Obviously, such structures are not merely expressive or coding for ideological positions, but also may play a role in the persuasion-reception dimension of communication In that case, such discourse structures may be assumed to contribute to the desired mental models of events: All emphasized information or opinions thus tend to

be construed in a prominent position in the mental model Relative to ideologies, discourse structures always have the double function of enacting

or executing underlying ideologies on the one hand, and, on the other hand, of acting as a more or less powerful means of persuasion

In this study, the researcher chose to follow Van Dijk‘s Semantic Discourse Analysis by focusing on investigating the lexical choices of Nouns, Verbs,

Adjectives and the use of metaphors in the selected news articles with the aim

of finding out the opinions and attitudes underlying in the reports

1.4 Critical Analysis of News Discourse

News mainly deals with happenings of the recent past It is defined in Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary (2008) as ―new information about something that has happened recently; reports of recent events that appear in newspapers

or on television or radio‖ News is also regarded as ―information about recent events that are of interest to a sufficiently large group, or that may affect the lives of a sufficiently large group‖ These definitions show that news is not only what happened recently, but also the events that are considered as important or newsworthy

News is the communication of the selected information The contents of news are not just facts about the world, but in a very general sense of ―beliefs‖,

―values‖, ―theories‖, ―propositions‖ and ―ideology‖ Fowler (1991) thinks that news is not a newsworthy event itself, but a product of selection and transformation of a real event Since the vast majority of events are not mentioned in news reports, the selection of events immediately gives readers

a partial view of the world And selection is usually accompanied by transformation, differential treatment in presentation according to numerous political, economic and social factors So the world of news is not the real world, but a world skewed and judged The language of news is pervasive and prominent in our society News, like any other discourse, is inevitably not a value-free reflection of reality (Fowler, 1991) Therefore, it is worthwhile to learn the way of how language works and affects people‘s comprehension towards this world, as well as how news is produced and shaped by values

In different countries different languages will be used in news discourses, and the various languages used will represent particular reality of the world Newspaper discourse has always announced its objectivity and impartiality towards the world, but with the birth of CDA, critical linguists and scholars have interrogated the assertion Richardson (2007) has stated that, journalistic discourse has some very specific textual characteristics, some very specific method of text production and consumption, and is defined by a particular set

of relationships between itself and other agencies of symbolic and material power These three sets of characteristics – that is, the language of journalism, its production and consumption and the relations of journalism to social ideas and institutions – are clearly inter-related and sometimes difficult to disentangle

1.5 Language of broadsheet newspapers and tabloid newspapers

To start with, it is widely known that the newspapers fall into two broad categories: the ‗popular‘ and ‗quality‘ press All the popular papers are

‗tabloid‘ in format The tabloids are essentially mass entertainment, as evidenced by the fact that they are smaller than the other papers, have larger illustrations, bold captions and a sensational prose style This leads to an emphasis on gossip, emotion and scandal, and a significant reduction in the news content By contrast, quality newspapers, known as ‗broadsheets‘ on account of their larger format, emphasize news coverage, political and economic analysis and social and cultural issues Some instances of both national quality and popular press are as follows:

Broadsheet: The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent, The Times, etc

Tabloids: The Mirror, The Star, The Daily Express, The Daily Mail, etc

Drawing on the distinction that Systemic-Functional grammar (Eggins, 2004) makes between spoken and written language, and between informal and formal language, it may be claimed that broadsheets have many features in common with formal and written language, whereas tabloids present a highly spoken and informal style

Concerning the use of words between tabloids and broadsheets, it appears that

‗everyday‘ lexis is more common in tabloids than in broadsheets, which in turn implies the prestigious quality of broadsheets, as opposed to the everyday and informal quality characteristic of tabloids

Besides, in terms of syntax, spoken language tends to be simple, while written language is usually complex This, in turn, has a direct bearing on the ‗lexical density‘ of the text, in the sense that on the one hand, spoken language is lexically sparse, and on the other, written language is lexically dense

Finally, the most outstanding difference between formal and informal language is that informal language (tabloids) tends to be highly attitudinal and emotional, while formal language (broadsheets) is more neutral and objective

1.6 Reviews of related studies

The disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 has been a controversial topic in the news media since March 8th 2014 As a result, there are quite a number of researches on media language regarding this incident Rohizah (2014) conducted a comparative research on 30 news reports of The Sunday Star (UK newspaper) and The Mingguan (Malaysian newspaper) published on March 16th 2014 Rohizah noticed that the Malaysian newspaper approached the event as a newspaper closely connected to the government with positive portrayal of government sources and an equally positive spin on the Chinese reactions and Malaysian officials‘ responses to the crisis

Meanwhile, the UK newspaper was seen as being mindful of its close ties to the Chinese community through its focus on the Chinese-Malaysian victims The UK newspaper also conveyed a sense of independent and in-depth reporting in its coverage compared to the Malaysian newspaper

A conversation analysis was carried out on 13 press conference video by Maros and Nasharudin (2016) to investigate the institutional interaction and power behind discourse The findings showed that turn-taking was regulated through five mechanisms (pre-allocated turn, turn-allocation techniques, turn-taking cues, overlaps and interruptions) Furthermore, the results also revealed that apart from the role of participants and institutional arrangements, most of the turn-taking mechanisms were used to portray institutional power The analysis led to the conclusion that despite the apprehensive situation faced by all involved, turn-taking appeared to have had a central role in shaping institutional interaction and power representation of the MH370 press conferences

Based on Scollon‘s media discourse analysis and Halliday‘s Systemic Functional Grammar, Yao (2015) analyzed 18 articles from a Chinese newspaper and a Malaysian newspaper r in terms of discourse features at the level of text, and different kinds of hidden ideologies based on discursive practice The ideology revealed is that the Malaysian newspaper seemed to present Malaysia‘s positive attitudes and numerous active efforts in the search operation, and to criticize the aggressive behaviors of Chinese relatives On other hand, the Chinese newspaper tended to present China‘s strong economic strength and numerous active efforts in the search operation Finally, from the data presented in his research, it could be concluded that news reports in

China and Malaysia are not transparent but constructed reality with their own ideological investment

CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY

This chapter is devoted to presenting the data for analysis and the methods that will

be deployed Beside the background information of the data, it also discusses the research approach, data collection and methodology of this study Finally, the methodology chapter outlines the data analysis procedures that are applied in the research

(2) How can the use of metaphorical expressions reveal the writers‘ opinion and attitude underlying in their writing?

2.2 Background information of the data

The incident of the missing airplane MH370 made the incident a newsworthy that had followers from different parts of the world Unlike any other airplane accidents that had happened in other countries before, MH370 had been facing the world watchers that were following the updates relating to the missing aircraft Readers and commentators, and different groups of audiences that followed the news of the tragedy were anxiously waiting for the result of the missing airplane

The involvement of foreign military and search team in the effort to find the missing aircraft attracted the attention of observers around the world The attention gained from people around the globe regarding the missing airplane

of MH370 created speculations of both positive and negative perspective

about the incident The perspective were varies from positive, neutral stand to negative opinions about the cause and effect of the missing airplanes towards both Malaysia and the whole world history as well

As a results, news reporters had various uses of lexical features in order to describe and inform the world readers about the missing of MH370 airplane

This research is intended to investigate the two features, namely lexical

choices and metaphors, used by the newspaper to portray different aspects of

the incident

2.3 Data collection

The thesis take twenty authentic news reports from two well-known UK newspapers – The Telegraph is a broadsheet newspaper and The Mirror is a tabloid newspaper In each newspaper, ten news reports about the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines MH370 were chosen, dated from March

8, 2014 to May 8, 2014

The main reason why these specific newspapers are selected is that they both are worldwide popular newspapers

The Telegraph is widely regarded as a national "newspaper of record"

and it maintains an international reputation for quality, having been described by the BBC as being "one of the world's great titles"3 The

Daily Telegraph has the largest circulation for a broadsheet newspaper

in the UK and the sixth largest circulation of any UK newspaper as of

2016 Articles published may also be found on the Telegraph Media

Group's www.telegraph.co.uk website, under the title of The Telegraph The Daily Mirror (also referred as The Mirror) is a British national

daily tabloid newspaper founded in 1903 By the middle of 20th

3 Rajan, Amol (21 December 2016) "What does the future hold for the Daily Telegraph?‖ BBC

News