THE SENKAKU/DIAOYU ISLANDS DISPUTE BETWEEN CHINA AND JAPAN: IDEOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES REVEALED THROUGH DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Abstract

An incident related to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute between Japan and China occurred in the summer of 2010, resulting in massive anti-Japan demonstrations in mainland China. These demonstrations followed the (possibly unlawful) arrest of a Chinese fisherman by the Japanese coastguard in the disputed area. Using Hallidayʼs Systemic Functional Grammar as an analytical framework, two texts describing this incident have been analysed to uncover ideological differences encoded in the lexico-grammatical choices made by the authors. These texts were chosen because they describe the same incident, presented in different registers. Text 1 (Appendix 1) is a 298-word extract from a summary of the incident, published in The Asia-Pacific Journal (Wada, 2010). This is a peer-reviewed, open source journal which provides analysis of events in the Asia-Pacific. The author, Professor Haruki Wada, is a native Japanese researcher. Text 2 (Appendix 2) is a 385-word extract of a newspaper article related to the incident, published by China Daily (Wei, 2010). China Daily is the only official English language newspaper in China and its reports are ideologically affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (Scollon, 2000, as cited in Li, 2010). As such, it plays an important role in expressing the nations ideologies to the international community. The author, Wei Tian, is a native Chinese journalist. Table 1 provides an overview of the two texts. This paper presents the results of a text analysis of the two articles and uncovers the ideological differences reflected in the lexicoHitotsubashi Journal of Law and Politics 44 (2016), pp.31-41. C Hitotsubashi University