Cross-Cultural Attitude Analysis in Media Discourse of Trump’s Presidential Victory: A Comparative Study of British, American, and Indian Written Reports

Abstract

In today’s globalized media landscape, the representation of political events reflects significant cultural and ideological differences, shaping public perceptions across contexts. While Martin and White’s appraisal theory within Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) has been extensively applied to spoken discourse, its use in analyzing written texts, particularly in cross-cultural comparisons, remains underexplored. This study addresses this gap by employing the appraisal framework to analyze attitudinal resources in media reports on Donald Trump’s presidential victory. Using UAM CorpusTool, the analysis examines variations in attitude types (affect, judgment, appreciation), polarity, explicitness, appraiser, and appraised elements across reports from The Economist (UK), AP News (US), and Colombo Gazette (India). Attitude resources and chi-square tests reveal significant cross-cultural differences in evaluative strategies: The Economist adopts critical judgment reflecting European liberal values, Colombo Gazette emphasizes regional priorities with pragmatic optimism, and AP News maintains neutrality consistent with American journalistic norms. The findings contribute to understanding how cultural and ideological contexts shape media discourse, offering insights into the interplay of language, ideology, and political narratives.