Unfold the Veil Covering News – A Case Study of English Language and Ideology in both American and Chinese Press

By taking Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) as research approach, this study analyzes and discusses two news reports related to the event that a Uyghur man was sentenced to death by the Intermediate People’s Court in Xinjiang, a western province of China. Both news reports on that event are taken respectively from two newspapers published in English language but with clearly opposed ideology, CNN and China Daily. We have found that, however, these two news reports are quite different and even completely opposite in making use of three saliently patterned linguistic features, that is, transitivity, naming of news actor and quotation patterns. We argue that the different even opposite selection in the three aspects in the two news reports are not arbitrary, but rather are ideologically motivated. Finally, we suggest that teachers are supposed to teach and help students read news reports with critical eyes.