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Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science

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ArticleOpen Access http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2026.08.006

A Corpus-assisted Comparative Study of Tariff Discourses in Chinese and Canadian Mainstream News Media

Yong Jiang1,2, Qiaoyi Liu2,3,*

1School of International Governance Innovation, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou 510420, Guangdong, China.

2School of English for International Business, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou 510420, Guangdong, China.

3School of Foreign Languages, Quanzhou Normal University, Quanzhou 362000, Fujian, China.

*Corresponding author: Qiaoyi Liu

Postgraduate Research Innovation Project of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies (Grant No. 25GWCXXM-028); the China Scholarship Council Project “Innovative Talent Cultivation Program on Interlingual and International Communication in the Age of AI” (Grant No. CXXM20250066); and the World Languages and Cultures Special Program under the Fujian Provincial Education and Research Project for Young and Middle-Aged Teachers (Social Sciences) (Grant No. JSZW25020).
Published: August 17, 2026

Abstract

This study employs a corpus-assisted comparative approach to examine the representation of tariff discourse in China Daily and The Globe and Mail from April to May 2025, when trade tensions intensified. Based on the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA), this study applies keyness analysis, syntagmatic analysis, and concordance analysis using AntConc and Sketch Engine to identify the themes and examine discursive strategies in tariff discourse. The findings indicate both similarities and differences in tariff discourse construction. Both newspapers highlight the disruptive effects of tariffs on global markets and domestic economies, emphasizing their economic consequences. However, Chinese media tend to legitimize tariff issues through political and moral evaluations, whereas Canadian media rely more on technocratic and economic reasoning. These findings shed light on how different media systems construct divergent narratives of trade disputes.

Keyword

Tariff discourse; corpus-assisted comparative analysis; Chinese and Canadian media; Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA)

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Copyright

© 2026 by the author(s).
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license, which permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not modified or adapted.
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How to cite this paper

A Corpus-assisted Comparative Study of Tariff Discourses in Chinese and Canadian Mainstream News Media

How to cite this paper: Yong Jiang, Qiaoyi Liu. (2026) A Corpus-assisted Comparative Study of Tariff Discourses in Chinese and Canadian Mainstream News Media. Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science10(8), 884-895.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2026.08.006