CORPUS LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF ECONOMIC NEWS DISCOURSE: FRAMING TAXATION AND COMPETITIVENESS IN INDONESIAN INVESTMENT POLICY REPORTING
Keywords:
corpus linguistics, economic news discourse, taxation framing, investment policy, reporting verbs, semantic prosody.Abstract
This study examines the corpus linguistic features of economic news discourse in Indonesian media reporting on taxation and investment competitiveness. Using a Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) framework, this research analyzes a news article from DDTCNews regarding the Ministry of Investment (BKPM) statement on production costs and fiscal policy. The corpus consists of 456 word tokens analyzed to identify lexical patterns, reporting verbs, evaluative language, and framing strategies. Findings reveal that the news discourse constructs taxation as a primary barrier to competitiveness through negative semantic prosody, with the word 'pajak' (tax) appearing 12 times and consistently collocating with problem-oriented lexis such as 'tinggi' (high), 'kena' (subject to), and multiple repetitions indicating burden. Reporting verbs show a balanced distribution between neutral ('mengatakan'/'said' - 2 times) and interpretive verbs ('menilai'/'assessed', 'menyayangkan'/'regretted'), reflecting journalistic objectivity while allowing evaluative positioning. The framing strategy employs a problem-solution structure where BKPM presents taxation complexity as the problem and fiscal simplification as the solution. Material action processes dominate with 'kena pajak' (taxed) appearing 6 times, emphasizing the repetitive nature of taxation in supply chains. These findings contribute to understanding how economic journalism constructs policy issues and shapes public perception of investment climate challenges in developing economies.
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