The general perspectives of child abuse issues are derived from the mainstream media. However, the media’s tendency to sensationalise the cases to attract viewership may distort the readers’ understanding and further propagate child maltreatment. This study investigates the language used in Malaysian news discourse on child abuse using Karpenko-Seccombe et al.’s (2020) method of analysis and Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) as a theoretical framework. This qualitative study analyses 28 news articles published by the government-affiliated news platform, The Star, and independent news media, Free Malaysia Today. Findings revealed that victims are described as invisible and depersonalised entities while perpetrators are individuals with distinct characteristics. Further, the transitivity processes found in the excerpts were Material, Mental, Relational, Verbal, and Existential processes. The emotive and evaluative language revealed the roles and attitudes of the journalists in presenting the news. Moreover, direct and indirect quotations expose the journalists’ need to stress the importance and severity of the requests delivered by news actors. Lastly, this study may benefit language students, policymakers, and academicians in linguistics and media studies.
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