A Comparative Study Of Transitivity In Sino-US Trade Dispute Reports

The transitive system proposed by Halliday, as an important tool for discourseanalysis, has been widely used in linguistic research by linguists. From the study of thetheory itself to its latest application, the transitivity system breaks the traditionaldefinition of transitivity, exploring the concept of language function from the semanticlevel. In the earlier study, the transitivity system was usually exerted to literary genreanalysis. With the development of the theoretical system, the application of transitivityhas been extended to other areas. In recent years, with the advances in networking andcommunications technology, news has become an important way for people to learnabout current events, to receive information. Therefore, the analysis of news discoursefrom the perspective of transitivity becomes increasingly appealing to linguisticsresearchers.Recently, Sino-US trade relation is in a high-incidence season, and the governmentand scholars are both exploring appropriate ways to cope with the dispute. For themoment, experts in international trade, international politics, economics and law allconcentrate their attention on comprehensive solutions under the frame of The WTOdispute settlement mechanism. However, from the angle of linguistics, both the originsand the solutions are far beyond international trade, politics, economics and law, butclosely related to the discourses of both sides. In international trade friction cases, thepractice of language of China and U.S.A. in negotiation, announcement and conferencedrives the issue moving forwards. A critical thinking on those discourses not only makescontributions to the innovation of linguistic theory, but also promotes the performanceof Chinese government and media in responding no matter denouncement, accusation oreconomic punishment.This article hires transitivity system and both quantitative and qualitative methods,to look at the Sino-US trade friction news discourse and explores the transitive processand other related elements in the sample discourses. The article first introduces thetheoretical framework of functional linguistics, to help readers learn more about thetransitive system. Subsequently, through the identification and analysis of text andphysical process, the thesis explores the factors that influence the distribution oftransitivity in such discourse.The authors hope that by reading this article, the reader will be able to enhance the ability to understand the news discourse, discern the intention implicit in the discourse.In addition, the authors also hope that journalists can benefit from it in the future, thenbe more skillful in dealing with a variety of news reports.