Ideational Meaning: Media Representations of Sino-Bangladesh Relation and Its Actors

This study, within the frameworks of Systemic Functional Grammar and Critical Discourse Analysis, aims to explore how Bangladesh’s news agency BSS (1975-2016) represents Sino-Bangladesh relations. Three methods are employed to collect the data: (i) the 40 year media coverage, (ii) questionnaire and (iii) observations at the newsrooms. By examining 140 news reports and investigating linguistic features, this study shows how the BSS under government control represents China and Sino-Bangladesh relations.  This study will focus only on the analysis of the news headline as a ‘micro story’, while the news body is completely excluded from the analysis. The findings will show how the social actors are constructed through the BSS media discourse on the topic. This study will detail the representations of the actors at the clause as a representation. The main reason for historical change is the establishment of the diplomatic ties between Bangladesh and China in 1975. This paper clearly explains how the media representation generally reflects social practice, ideology and power relations in social structures at the time of reporting. Keywords: critical discourse analysis, systemic functional grammar, Sino-Bangladesh relation, BSS media discourse, representation DOI : 10.7176/JLLL/52-11

relations" that appeared in the BSS during the periods . The BSS is only the government owned agency, which directly receives foreign news through satellite from the world agencies and domestic news from its branch offices. The news, which are collected and edited by a group of professional journalists, are regularly distributed primarily to the government offices, print and electronic media and secondly to the regional and world agencies (Ministry of Information, 2017, p. 343). However, I started collecting data from the BSS in June 2017. After primary analysis, 140 news reports are classified as "Sino-Bangladesh relations" in the text itself on attribution of news stories (Bell, 1999, p. 244). In gathering theoretical studies, 177 related studies were downloaded from the ProQuest database and Google Scholar. Only 79 studies applying CDA approaches were included and organized under two main approaches. My first approach is Halliday's (1994, p. 30) Systemic Functional Linguistics, which clearly interprets three definitions as psychological Subject (Theme), grammatical Subject (Subject) and logical Subject (Actor). This is believed that Subject, Actor and Theme function at three distinct clauses: (i) The 'Theme' functions in the structure of the clause as a message; (ii) the 'Subject' functions in the structure of the clause as an exchange; and (iii) the 'Actor' functions in the structure of the clause as a representation. As Halliday (1994) suggests, "Three headings refer to the transitivity system that enables human beings to build a mental picture of their reality" (108). This study focuses only on the structure of the clause as a representation, while the other structures are excluded from the analysis. My second approach adopts Fairclough's (1995a, p. 15) critical discourse analysis to analyze situated meanings in the context of social change. Fairclough (1995a, 39) defined institutional subjects as 'social subjects', which occupy subject positions in a variety of institutions. Three models (text, discourse practice, social practice) can contribute to the representations of social subjects, social actions and relations (98). As Malinowski (1923) points out, "The analysis may refer to the context of situation, institutional context, and context of culture". Fairclough (1995b, p. 3) also advocated media discourse, which influences social subjects and their actions. Therefore, I shall analyze the BSS media discourse using Fairclough's framework associated with Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar, the best tool for examining "linguistic and ideological meanings" (Bell & Garrett, 1998, p. 18;Fowler, 1994, p. 39). This study aims to discuss the media representations of Sino-Bangladesh relations linking between discourse, ideology and power.

Media Representations of Sino-Bangladesh Relation and its Actors
This category aims to explore the historical changes of Sino-Bangladesh relations for two main reasons. First, analysis focuses on the situated meanings defined by the context of situation. Second, it focuses on the interpretations of situated meanings using Halliday's systemic functional linguistics.

Situated Meaning
This subcategory aims to define the situated meanings of Sino-Bangladesh relations asking the first question: What changes have taken place during the period of the relations between discourse change and change in the relationship between Bangladesh andChina (1975-2016)? The establishment of Sino-Bangladesh relations in the October 1975 is widely seen as a great reflection in both countries (Ahmed, 2013, p. 275 Up to now the joint committee has had 12 meetings, 35 visits including 207 persons in different fields during the periods . China, India, Myanmar and Bangladesh were the active participants in a meeting on February 6-7, 2002. China wants to make a common economic grid circling Myanmar, Thailand, and India using its Yunnan province. Bangladesh and China have the prospect to build the 900km Kunming-Chittagong Highway through Myanmar (Ahmed, 2013, p. 279;Sarker, 2014, p. 83). Since Bangladesh and China are facing trade imbalance, China gave zero-tariff treatment to 4,762 products from Bangladesh on July1, 2010. Both countries have also had a number of Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) addressing climate change (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2017, p. 3). Adopting a look east foreign policy, therefore, the Sino-Bangladesh relation is termed as a symbol of 'old trusted friendship'.

Interpretation of Situated Meaning
This subcategory aims to interpret the situated meanings using Halliday's transitivity system that looks at how meaning is represented through the news headlines of Sino-Bangladesh relations, asking the second question: How are social subjects and their actions represented through use of grammar, text and discourse practice? As Halliday (1994, p. 15) points out, "Transitivity system is a network of systems for making meanings." The system shows how language users build a mental picture of their reality that consists of outer and inner experiences. The outer experience is the process of the external world, while the inner experience is the process of consciousness (107). The process of the external world is called Material process while the process of consciousness is called mental process. With these two processes, there is a third type of process called Relation process. On the borderline between Material and Mental processes are the Behavioural processes. On another borderline between Mental and Relational is that of Verbal processes. On the borderline between Relational and Material are that of Existential, of all are simply recognized to transitivity system. Halliday (1994, p. 108) suggests three components: the process itself, which is expressed in its verb phrase; the participant, which is typically realized in its noun phrase; and the circumstance, which is usually expressed in its adverbial or prepositional phrase. Transitivity expresses the representational meaning of the clause with participant and circumstance. Using systemic functional view of language, the transitive structure can include the main processes summarized in Table 1. China [is] to remain beside Bangladesh: Wang The Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) adopts transitivity system as a semantic system on the idea by a clause about the world in which an action, situation and relation are predicted by the participants in language use. As Fairclough (1992) points out, "Transitivity analysis offers insights into social, cultural and ideological factors that may influence how a process is signified linguistically in a particular text." To explore the construction of social subjects in the BSS discourse, I first look at the clause as a representation of how ideologies are constructed in the front-page news headlines, which generally summarize the news contents termed as a "micro story" and "tap & tag" (van Dijk, 1988, p. 226;Bell, 1991, p. 185). To analyze the transitivity in the headlines, I collected 140 news stories on Sino-Bangladesh relations from the BSS . This study has focused only on the Material, Mental and Relational processes, while the other processes are completely excluded from the analysis as there is no priority of one process over another. Table (2) summarizes 54 Material processes using the roles of participants and processes developed by Halliday (1994, p. 108). This assumption is related to the representations of the power and semantic relations in the "who does what to whom" of the Indo-European language families (Robert, 1987, p. 11). Table (2) shows choice in texts with 38 actors and 16 goals appearing in the subject positions. Most of the actions and situations that involve China are realized as actors in active structures whereas those of Bangladesh are expressed as goals in passive structures. In doing so, the BSS presents Bangladesh and China as two participants who are actively involved in the doing processes. The Bangladesh related participants are presented as goals, which are acted upon and affected in passive structures (headlines 2, 10-15, 24, 26, 28, 47) while the China related participants appearing as goals (headline 3, 7, 53). It can be seen from Table 2 that 38 actors are represented as what Fairclough (1995a, p. 39) calls "institutional subject", a term that refers to the participants. Of 17 place the Chinese participants as Actor, including "Chairman Mao" in 1, "PRC" in 4, 6, "China" in 19, 29, 41, "Chinese President" in 22, 32, "Chinese cultural show" in 33, "Chinese Premier" in 34, 35, 37, "Chinese embassy" in 40, "No alternative to socialism" in 42, "Exports to China" in 46 and "Jinping" in 51, 52. Of 13 place the Bangladeshi participants as Actor, including "Ersad" in 5, "BNP team" in 16,"MP" in 17,20,21,27,"Bangladesh" in 18,23,30,31,48 and "Speaker" in 44,50. Of 8 place the Sino-Bangladesh-related participants as Actor, including "Paper" in 9, "China, Bangladesh" in 8, "Press" in 25, "Bangladesh, China" in 36, 54, "Japan" in 39, "BCFA" in 43 and "Hasina, Xi" in 49. Table (2) also shows 16 goals as Subject in passive structure. Of 11 place the Sino-Bangladesh-related participants as Goal, including "dinner" in 10, "20 June activities" in 11, "protocol" in 13, " foreign Minister's press conference" in 14, "flood research accord" in 15, "deal" in 24, " MOU" in 26, " Bangladesh-China joint statement" in 28, "Bangladesh, China" in 38, "four decades of Sino-Bangladesh Relations" in 45 and "28 projects" in 47. Of 4 place the China related participants as Goal, including "Vice-Premier Li Hsiennien's speech" in 3, "Embassy celebration" in 7, "Visit Ming Qing Palace" in 12 and "Chinese President" in 53. Only one places Bangladesh as Goal, "Major general Ziaur Rahman's speech" in 2. The social subjects are expressed by the verb phrases that typically require animate subjects such as PRC invites in 6, Papers report in 9, Bangladesh [is] to give in 18, China [is] to provide in 19, Russia edges out in 23, Press reports in 25, China [is] to publish in 29, Bangladesh maintains in 30, Bangladesh joins in 31, Chinese embassy hosts in 40, China [is] to continue in 41, BCFA [is] to celebrate in 43, Bangladesh rolls out in 48 and Xi's visit lifted in 51. By connecting the social subjects with the actions of the verbs, the BSS seems to ally all the institutional subjects with "no alternative to socialism" to remove "discriminations" from two countries in 42. After analysis of Actor and Goal in the material process, this study needs to analyze the mental process suggested by Halliday (1994, p. 117). Table (3) summarizes 42 mental processes with Sensor and Phenomenon appearing in the subject positions. Of 19 place the Bangladesh related participants as Sensor, including "outgoing Dhaka envoy" in 1, "Minister" in 6, "PM" in 9, 20, 21, 24, 26, 28, 37, "Bangladeshi politicians" in 10, "Dhaka" in 11, 40 , "Air Chief" in 12, "Proposed deep sea port in Bangladesh" in 14, Bangladesh" in 15, 23, "Hamid" in 22, "Speaker" in 29 and "President" in 39. Of 12 place the China related participants as Sensor, including "Chinese PM" in 7, "Better China-US ties" in 13, "China" in 16-18, 27, 32, "Yunnan governor" in 19, "Chinese Premier" in 25, "Chinese President Jinping" in 33, "Chinese Minister" in 38 and "Xi" in 41. Only 1 places the Sino-Bangladesh related participant as Sensor, "Bangladesh-China" in 34. Table (3) also shows 10 passive structures placing the Sino-Bangladesh-related participants as Phenomenon, including "PRC" in 2, "remark on trade" in 3, "curbing baby boom" in 4, "all possible help" in 5, "China's continued support to Bangladesh Army" in 8, "relations with China" in 30, 31, "friendship between Bangladesh and China" in 35, "China-Bangladesh" in 36 and "Bangladesh-China ties" in 42. By applying transitivity in the headlines, I need to look at the representations of the relational processes, which establish the power relations between the Material processes of the physical world and the Mental processes of the abstract world. This study examines how the participants are classified as identifying and attributive in the relational process. In identifying process, the identified and the identifier (Halliday's (1994, p. 122) Token and Value) are used to identify each other. I shall first explain the relational process on the intensive type, 'X is A'. In this type, the most typical verb is 'be' while X and A are nominal groups. Tables (4-5) have included 44 relational processes with Carrier and Attribute according to Halliday (1994, p. 130). Table (4) illustrates 17 Carriers appearing in the subject positions: Of 8 place the Bangladesh related phrases as Carrier with "MP's" in 2, "AL" in 6, "PM" in 7, 8, 9, 10, "President Abdul Hamid" in 12, 13. Of 6 place the China related phrases as Carrier with "Message" in 3, 4, "talks" in 5, "Beijing" in 11 and "six member Chinese delegations" in 16. Of 3 delete Bangladesh and China from Carrier, including "new development" in 1, "major FDI boost" in 15 and "global economy" in 17. Table (4) also shows 17 circumstantial elements at the end of the clause. Of 10 place the Sino-Bangladesh related phrases as Circumstance, including "in China-Bangladesh relations" in 1, "for further development of communication between China, Bangladesh" in 6, "for increasing Chinese investment in Bangladesh" in 7, "for direct road, rail links with China" in 8, "for strong ties with China" in 9, 10, "for new height in ties with Dhaka" in 11, "for reducing Bangladesh-China trade gap" in 13, "for taking Dhaka-Beijing relations to new heights" in 14 and "in precarious state" in 17. Of 6 place the China related phrases as Circumstance, including "to PRC" in 2, "to Li" in 3, "to Zhao" in 4, "with Li" in 5, "in Beijing" in 12, "from China on the way" in 15. Only 1 places the Bangladesh related phrase as Circumstance, "in city" in 16.  Halliday (1994, p. 133). It can also be seen from Table (5) that the ideological relations are constructed with the ownership of social subjects and their words, which are "Bangladeshi products" and "duty free access to China" in 1 and "China" and "full assistance to achieve goals of Vision 2021, 2041" in 11. In addition, the rhetorical relation between "Dhaka-Beijing Agree" and "cooperation to newer height" in 5 and "China" and "Bangladesh" in 7-9 has reinforced Sino-Bangladesh relations stronger. Their reality shows "Water availability" with "Himalayan river basins" in 2, "China" with "develop road and rail communication" in 12. In a wider sense, "Chinese policy" is assigned with "economic ties with neighbours" in 4, which increase the regional relations. China recognizes "Bangladesh becomes middle income country by 2021" in 3. Thus in 10 "China is Bangladesh's inspiration to achieve middle-income status", whereas China is the Token and Bangladesh's is the Value.  (6) shows 14 intensive processes, whereas the Subject is the identified/Token and the rest is the identifier/Value (Halliday, 1994, p. 124). China is the Token which promotes 5 positive values such as "tested friend of Bangladesh" in 3, "eager to be partner of building digital Bangladesh" in 7, "keen to ink FTA to cut trade deficit" in 8, "keen to provide financial assistance to Bangladesh" in 13 and "keen to scale up investments" in 14. Chinese FM is the Token carrying Value with "Saturday" in 5 and "Today" in 6. Bangladesh is the Token which promotes 3 positive values such as "a strategic partner of China" in 4, "a middle income nation by 2021" in 11, 12 and "PM" is the Token "maintaining good ties with neighbours" as Value in 9. Only 2 tokens are constructed with the values as "Bangladesh" in 1, "science minded" in 2. Furthermore, the BSS categorizes India, along with China as a Token and "epoch making" as a Value in 10. Table (6) also brings together in a single display all the categories of relational processes, where the Subject, in the column of the Token/identified is constructed by the Finite along with circumstance in the mood structure. Therefore, the BSS writers have constructed Sino-Bangladesh relations both syntactically and thematically.

. Conclusion
The findings show how the social subjects are constructed through the BSS media discourse of Sino-Bangladesh relations. Chapter four explained that the media representation in the headlines of the social subjects generally reflects social practice, ideology and power relations in social structures at the time of reporting. Using Halliday's transitivity system, this analysis has found how the English clause is combined with three functional components (called 'metafunctions'), which are the representations of Bangladesh and China as two participants, Actor and Goal in the Material; Sensor and Phenomenon in the Mental; and Carrier and Attribute in the Relational processes (Token as Subject). The systems are the mix of the configurations among the types of processes, participants and circumstances. By using 140 news headlines, the BSS must try to reflect its audiences towards the Sino-Bangladesh relations. This study has pointed out 55 participants as China, 46 participants as Bangladesh and 39 participants as Sino-Bangladesh relations appearing at the subject position. Representations of the participants as social subject not only encode the evaluation and judgment but also create an opposition between us (Bangladesh) and them (China) and construct a world of 'ideology' that must remove discriminations from both countries. Part four detailed the representations of Bangladesh and China as two dominant actors constructed with use of personal terms in understanding how ideologies reside in texts and language is a material form of ideology (Fairclough, 1995a, p. 73). The actors can be represented linguistically in various ways. Name reference is a key device in understanding the representation of the actors to the readers of the headlines. 'Chairman Mao' and 'Xi' are two historical figures appearing in the clause as a representation. The people with extreme beliefs on particular meanings seem to demand that the complexity is inherent in many headlines, where power is often associated with the act of controlling the non powerful participants (Renugah, 2015, p. 63). CDA balances the emphasis on the text with the careful examination of media discourse practices, although the BSS looks for newswire stories that are 'copy ready'. This article, however, is a step towards the examination of media discourse which is not limited to the text and talk but accounts also for their functions (van Dijk, 2005, p. 66). CDA provides analysts with the tools to explain the structures of social and political contexts within media discourse, which has the power to influence social relations, social subjects and identities (Fairclough, 1995b, p. 2). Therefore, CDA calls solidarity between Bangladesh and China with the establishment of diplomatic ties in the October 1975, which is the main actor of making Sino-Bangladesh relations stronger. As we celebrate the 43 th anniversary of Sino-Bangladesh relations in the October 2018, the historical review will fill us with confidence and expectations to our two nations, who will join hands and move forward in constructing the old trusted friendship. Analysis of the media representations reveals the ideational meaning of social subjects and their actions within contexts of Sino-Bangladesh relations, which will be benefited in many ways. This study covers the BSS media discourse, which was limited to the analysis of news headlines. Another limitation is the news body, which was excluded from the analysis if these relations will develop more, many issues will include with this relation in future.