A Study of Transitivity in the Sino-US Trade War Discourse from the Perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis — A Case Study of Center for Strategic and International Studies

Abstract

From the perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis, this study analyzes the transitivity in American Think Tanks’ discourse in the Sino-US trade war. It uses Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework model as the theoretical framework and Halliday's theory of transitivity and Van Dijk's theory of Ideology Square as analytical tools. The corpus was selected from the experts’ comments on Sino-US trade war published on the official website of the Center for Strategic and International Studies from March 23, 2018 to March 24, 2019. Major findings are as follows: experts in CSIS use material (56.49%) and relational (26.62%) process most frequently, followed by mental (7.79%), existential (5.84%) and verbal (3.25%) process, with no behavioral process. Experts in CSIS use material process and relational process frequently in their comments, which indicates that they try to expound the measures taken by both sides in the Sino-US trade war and the impact of these measures on the development of Sino-US trade war.