Vol. 2 No. 5 (2025)

Research Articles

A Corpus-assisted Discourse Analysis of the American and British Media Reports on the Discharge of Water from Fukushima

Published 2025-05-31

  • Tiantian Li
    • ,
  • Xiyu Zhen

Tiantian Li
The Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong 999077, China

Xiyu Zhen
The Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong 999077, China

Abstract

The Japanese government’s announcement to discharge over a million tons of clean but still radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean has aroused substantial attention and has been extensively reported by media outlets worldwide. This study aims to shed light on how the American media and the British media differ in constructing the discourse in terms of linguistic choices and functional features. AntConc 3.5.9 is used to analyze keywords and collocates. UAM Corpus Tool 6.2j is employed to annotate the texts and conduct transitivity analysis. Our study finds that the American media tend to convey a mix of assurance, confidence, and endorsement towards the implementation of the water release. The British media appear to present factual information including the details of the water processing, the environmental consequences of the water release, and the concerns of other Asian countries.

Keywords

Discourse analysis, American, British, Collocates, Transitivity

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