Translating Political Agency: A Hallidayan Analysis of Iranian Official Discourse in Fox News

This article examines the recontextualization of Iranian political agency in Fox News coverage of the ۲۰۲۵ Iran-Israel-US conflict. Drawing on textual metafunction, it applies theme-rheme and given-new frameworks to Persian source statements, English reference renderings, and their Fox News representations. The findings reveal systematic shifts in the representation of Iranian political agency across the three textual layers. Collective and nationally framed agency is frequently recast as leader- or regime-centered, while threat, confrontation, defiance, and military capability gain prominence in the target discourse. Legal, diplomatic, cultural, and sovereignty-based dimensions receive comparatively less prominence in the target discourse. These patterns emerge through thematic, informational, reporting, labeling, and headline shifts, rather than lexical substitution alone. Treating quotation, paraphrase, headline compression, and mediated attribution as translation-mediated recontextualization, the study reveals less visible mechanisms of ideological representation in translated news discourse. The findings contribute to news translation research by showing how textual prominence reshapes political agency and ideological meaning.

کلیدواژه ها:

Ideological recontextualization ، News translation ، Political discourse ، systemic functional linguistics ، theme ، rheme