The Subjectivity and Objectivity Construction in Trade War Reports via Transitivity System

Abstract

US president Donald Trump has accused China of unfair trading practices and intellectual property theft. Consequently, there is a trade war between America and China by means of imposing tariffs on each other’s goods ("A quick," 2020). As the war develops, more and more American and Chinese audiences are trying to investigate the root issue through news reports and other media channels. However, the main problem for audiences is whether or not the news reports from both American and Chinese perspectives deliver the information concerning the negotiation process objectively. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate further into the construction of objectivity and subjectivity in related reports. In total, two reports are selected: one is from the FOX Business Network in the U.S. and the other is from the CGTN (China Global Television Network) in China. Via Michael Halliday’s Transitivity System in Systemic Functional Linguistics, the frequency appearance of each process types is counted and explained. Also, the qualitative approach is applied while scrutinizing each clause word by word. This paper discovers that Trish Regan, an American journalist, preferred to illustrate the circumstance about the trade war as if she was part of the negotiation team while Liu Xin, a Chinese anchor, focused heavily on attacking Regan personally. In addition, this thesis also reminds viewers and journalists to be aware of the subjective language use in reports. Last but not least, it has proved the applicability of the Transitivity System in news reports analysis.