Political discourse analysis of news reports. (c2016)

Abstract

Politics has proven itself to be a linguistic activity that utilizes emotional appeals that mold people’s beliefs and thoughts. This study is an exploration of the language of politics in two Lebanese newspapers - which are, As- Safir and The Daily Star. Three different frameworks were chosen to carry out a critical discourse analysis of the news reports. The frameworks used are that of Michael Halliday, Teun van Dijk, and Norman Fairclough. Findings show that the language of politics is never an impartial and objective one. It is structured in a way that supports respective political beliefs and sustains respective ideologies; hence, shaping the readers’ thoughts into believing that the “enemy” is hateful and intolerable. Nonetheless, future research could develop instruments that aim at analyzing the perceptions of the vast audiences to further objectify the act of critical discourse analysis.