A Transitivity Analysis of Ecological Discourse

Taking the international news reports made by China and Japan in response to the Fukushima nuclear wastewater event as the corpus, this paper makes a comparative study on the use of transitivity resources in the reports of the two countries under the guidance of transitivity theory. It was found that there are opposing differences between the two countries regarding their ecosophy and the purpose of reporting. China takes the maintenance of the global ecosystem as its core point of view, emphasizing the adverse environmental impact caused by the discharge of nuclear wastewater into the sea. Japan takes its own interests as its primary concern, focusing on its own treatment of nuclear wastewater and the impact of China’s seafood ban on Japan’s economy, and shifting its vision to cover up the actual environmental harm of the discharge.