Deconstructing agency in the G20 leaders' declarations in the last decade: A corpus-assisted discourse study

Abstract

Investigating agency has become a pivotal issue in discourse studies, especially organizational discourse. This study aims to identify the controlling agency (who/what) behind G20 leaders' declarations in the last decade and how such agency is constructed. To this end, this study offers a concise examination of relevant literature investigating fundamental concepts like discourse and agency in light of the overlapping relationship between form and function in language studies. Further, an eclectic methodological approach has been devised to arrive at a multi-leveled analysis. Two stages of analysis were designed. First, a corpus of the declarations between 2012 and 2021 was created and analyzed using #LancsBox v.6.x. and Wmatrix. At this stage, we was established as a prime agent in the corpus and proven to collocate heavily with agentive speech acts. One sample declaration, Riyadh 2020, was used for minute discourse analysis in the second stage. Inspired by transitivity system, process type analysis, and multivalence frameworks, this stage revealed the profound presence of non-human agency alongside the human one. Nevertheless, further examination demonstrated that this sample still constrains non-human agency due to semantic and textual constraints.