AN INTERTEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF SEX-TRAFFICKING VICTIMS’ REPRESENTATION IN MALAYSIAN NEWS MEDIA

The objective of this study was to conduct an intertextual analysis of sex-trafficking victims’ representation in Malaysian news media. More specifically, the study applies critical discourse analysis as a tool to explore the different social actors’ voices and analyse how they are woven together textually or recontextualised to reproduce the underlying power and ideologies of the media on this social group. This study is based on media texts and the data is obtained from mainstream English-language newspapers, The Star and New Straits Times. Grounded in CDA, the selected articles are examined using Reisigl and Wodak’s (2009) discourse-historical approach and van Leeuwen’s (1996, 2008) socio-semantic categories of social actors to investigate how discursive strategies and other features of texts are employed intertextually to construct particular meaning about victims of sex trafficking. The analysis of newspaper excerpts have led to the representation of sex-trafficking victims as threats, sex offenders, and foreign invaders. Additionally, findings from the intertextual analysis reveal that certain voices have been given more emphasis by the news media while some voices are markedly silenced in order to privilege others.