Corpus-assisted Discourse Analysis of Attitudes Towards Huawei in American and British 5G News Discourse

Abstract

In recent years, the fifth-generation wireless technology (henceforth 5G) has emerged and gradually occupied an essential position in the development plans of some countries around the globe. The Chinese telecom company Huawei is a prominent participant in this sector and receives much media attention. However, how the company is represented and appraised in Western newspapers is not well investigated. This study probes into 709 American news articles collected from the New York Times and Wall Street Journal and 697 British ones from The Times and The Guardian from January 2018 to June 2020. A corpus-assisted comparative analysis is conducted from the perspective of Appraisal Theory. The study aims to identify specific attitudinal resources used in two countries’ news discourses, investigate possible similarities and differences between their attitudes towards Huawei, and finally provide some interpretations and explanations regarding relevant socio-political contexts.