A Comparative Analysis of Pakistani and International English Newspapers: Finding Eco-linguistic Transitivity in Dawn and Al Jazeera

Abstract

Environmental discourse in climate-vulnerable regions like Pakistan is profoundly shaped by media language, which often subtly assigns or obscures agency in ecological crises such as floods and heatwaves. This study examines eco-linguistic transitivity patterns by comparing Pakistani English (Dawn) and international (Al Jazeera) newspapers. Its objectives are to quantify and categorize process types (material, relational, mental, and verbal) across selected articles and to statistically assess differences in agency attribution, responsibility framing, and power dynamics. This quantitative study employs a purposively sampled dataset of 10 articles from each outlet (2025), analyzed via AntConc for frequency counts, keyword collocations, and chi-square tests for statistical significance (p < .05). Halliday's (1990) Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) transitivity framework guides the manual tagging of verbal groups, enabling a nuanced dissection of how processes construct ecological narratives. Expected outcomes include the dominance of relational processes in both datasets—potentially obscuring human agency in environmental degradation—alongside significant cross-cultural variations, such as greater material processes in Dawn reflecting localized accountability. These findings will inform media strategies for explicit agency attribution, enhancing ecological awareness and policy discourse in Pakistani English media.