Framing Social Actors in Climate Change Communication: A Functional Analysis of Transitivity

Social Actors and Transitivity in Climate Change Communication

Abstract

This paper attempts to analyze the social actor's representation in news articles about climate change policies in the Arab World. We employed van Leeuwen's social actors theory combined with Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) theory, specifically the transitivity system analysis. The data included twelve news articles from pro-government news outlets in the Arab World, covering the period from 2021 to 2024. The articles were purposively selected to cover the study topic, focusing on the articles that were found to engage the multiple social actors involved in the process and legislation of climate change policies. The findings revealed that the news articles concentrate on specific social actors while minimizing the role of others who may have a crucial role to play. Highlighted social actors include the governments and countries' leaderships, the international institutions providing funding for climate change initiatives in the Arab World, and lastly and least focused on, the private sector. Ignored social actors include scientists and researchers, environmental activists, and other public groups that may usually get involved in such initiatives. The study recommends that the media and news writers should pay more attention to linguistic elements when tackling such a critical issue that affects all sectors of society.

Keywords: climate change, linguistic choices, representation strategies, transitivity, SFL, social actors