A Comparative Study Of American,British,Nigerian And South African Media Attitudes Towards "The 2018 Focac" From The Perspective Of Transitivity

The 2018 Beijing Summit of the China-Africa Cooperation Forum(FOCAC)aroused widespread attention from media at home and abroad.South Africa and Nigeria are important participants and active reporters of FOCAC.Due to their historical influence in Africa,America and Britain also have kept close attention on FOCAC as well as on China’s rising presence in Africa.In order to accurately reveal and understand the above four countries’ media attitudes towards the 2018 FOCAC summit,this study selects 10 news reports from American mainstream newspapers,14 from British mainstream newspapers,14 from Nigerian mainstream newspapers,10 from South African mainstream newspapers as a corpus with a total 41,541 words.Under the guidance of transitivity theory,a comprehensive,careful transitivity analysis of the selected corpus was carried out at the clause level.With the help of the UAM corpus tool 3.3,this study annotates and counts the general distribution of each transitivity process,and the combination of processes,participants and circumstances.These results enable this study to describe,compare and contrast the target countries’ media attitudes towards the 2018 FOCAC summit.Results show that the four countries’ news reports all use a variety of combinations of transitivity process,participants and circumstances.Similarly,material process is used to illustrate the opportunities and challenges brought by the FOCAC to China and African countries.Relational process emphasizes the problems and impacts of ChinaAfrica cooperation.Verbal process employs various sources to present varied attitudes of different interest groups towards China-Africa cooperation.However,in terms of the elements in transitivity processes,there exist some significant differences: 1)In material process,news reports in the four countries are inclined to choose different actors.American and British media tend to use Chinese-related actors to highlight that China is the initiator and beneficiary,while South African and Nigerian media adopt African-related actors to emphasize that Africa is a partner as well as a beneficiary.2)In relational process,American and British media often use relational verbs to establish relations between China’s investment and African debt,showing a skeptical and worrisome attitude.However,South African and Nigerian media use relational verbs to explain the debt or to express their trust of China,showing a more positive and appreciative attitude.3)In verbal process,American and British media resort to a larger diversity of discourse sources,but words quoted often show feelings of doubts.South African and Nigerian media are more monotonous in the use of discourse sources and express more recognition or praise of China while implying slight concern about issues such as debt and labor.These differences in transitivity can be seen as textual indication that America and Britain,as major donors in Africa,are displaying discontent about China’s growing presence in Africa and are worried about their vested interests in Africa,but South Africa and Nigeria can realistically observe China’s contribution to African economic growth and directly respond to criticism and suspicion from Western countries.