LINGUISTIC REPRESENTATION OF US-JAPAN MILITARY-POLITICAL ALLIANCE IN THE US MEDIA

Abstract

Since the 1960s, Japan has maintained a close military-political alliance with the United States. But despite the long history of this alliance, public opinion polls on the attitudes of the US residents towards it show a decline in support once in a while. The author assumes that it is news media that have an effect on public opinion. With the employment of corpus linguistic software LanscBox, the study conducts an inductive frame analysis of the US press coverage of the military-political relations between the US and Japan in 2013, in which it combines principles of qualitative and quantitative analytical approaches. Two main types of frames were identified. On the one hand, the US administration tends to prove its readiness to protect the interests of Japan. On the other hand, negative coverage of the situation in the Asia-Pacific region creates a frame of dangerous image of the alliance between the US and Japan.