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Article published In:
Language, Politics and Media: The Hong Kong Protests
Edited by Guofeng Wang and Ming Liu
[Journal of Language and Politics 21:1] 2022
► pp. 17–36

Britain as a protector, a mediator or an onlooker?

Examining the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests in British newspapers

ORCID logo | Shanghai Normal University

Since Hong Kong’s handover to China, British newspapers still play an active role in constructing Britain’s connections with its former colony. This study elaborates a schema for protests to help better understand protests in general. Based on this schema, the study examined representations of the 2019–20 protests in British newspapers using the approach of corpus-assisted critical discourse studies. The analysis shows that they mainly used the predicational strategy, and emphasized the Chinese government’s control of Hong Kong – including the inabilities of the Hong Kong government and police violence – in contrast with the protestors’ demands for universal suffrage. They suggested that Britain act as a mediator to shoulder a moral responsibility over Hong Kong. Their attitudes are interpreted with regard to Britain’s foreign policies and the dominant ideology cultivated in its historical, socio-political contexts and suggest that the UK journalistic practice regarding Hong Kong issues is political-driven to a great extent.

Keywords: news discourse, Hong Kong protests, critical discourse study, corpus-assisted approach, The Times , The Guardian , The Telegraph
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.2019–20 Hong Kong protests
  • 3.Theoretical base
    • 3.1A schema for protests
    • 3.2News discourse and ideology: An approach of corpus-assisted critical discourse studies
  • 4.Data and methods
  • 5.Findings
    • 5.1Keywords and the collocates of five social actors
    • 5.2The Hong Kong government
    • 5.3The Chinese central government
    • 5.4The protestors
    • 5.5The police
    • 5.6Britain
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 29 September 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.21018.wan
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