Framing ‘economic rival’? Targeted attitudes toward Chinese companies in the Wall Street Journal’s English and Chinese editions of economic news

Abstract

This study compared the use of ‘targeted attitudes’ in The Wall Street Journal’s (wsj) economic news of Chinese companies in its English edition and Chinese edition. The study included two corpora comprising 1,480 articles from wsj’s English and Chinese editions (2020–2023). To identify targeted attitudes towards Chinese enterprises in these corpora, this study applied the Attitude system in the Appraisal System (Martin and White, 2005; and Bednarek, 2008). Furthermore, a swot-based taxonomy (Wheelen et al., 2017) was used to categorise both internal and external factors of these companies as attitude targets. A corpus analysis of the targeted attitudes revealed significant (LL≥3.84; p<0.05) frequency differences between the two editions. The English edition used internal and external attitudes to portray Chinese companies holistically. A greater amount of internal Inclination and internal Propriety were used to convey Chinese firms’ aspirations, environmental efforts, and illegal behaviours. A greater amount of external Capacity was used to evaluate the impacts of socio-political factors on the firms. Conversely, the Chinese edition used a greater amount of internal Appreciation to evaluate the value of Chinese corporate assets. These findings imply how wsj tailors its economic coverage to cater to the expectations of different economic expert audiences during China’s economic fluctuations.