Discourse Analysis and Media Attitudes: The Representation of the War on Gaza in CNN News Coverage

Abstract

War reporting is shaped by ideological and institutional perspectives, with different media outlets using distinct linguistic strategies to construct and represent conflicts and legitimacy in different ways. The present study aims to (1) revealing how the social actors are named and referred to linguistically;(2) figuring out the characteristics and attributes which are assigned to the social actors ;(3) exploring the construction of the argumentation schemes and topoi that are used to legitimize representation of the war ;(4) determining how the perspectives of the representation of the war on Gaza are constructed ; (5) conducting the realization of the intensification and mitigation strategies in the selected data under the study .To achieve the aims and test the hypotheses, this study is structured according to the following procedures: presenting a theoretical framework that surveys the study’s key concepts; collecting data and providing an adapted model of (Reisigl & Wodak) five discursive strategies ; conducting a discourse analysis for analysing the twenty eight news reports ; discussing the results of analysis, and arriving at some conclusions.
The study concludes that many linguistic devices of nomination strategy are used to refer to the social actors in the news coverage of Al-Jazeera and CNN like proper names, professional anthroponyms; adjectival phrases and explicit predicates are utilised in attributing the social actors ; topoi and argumentation schemes are employed to legitimize claims of truth and normative rightness; both channels predominantly employ a distance perspective over an involvement perspective, Al Jazeera foregrounded Palestinians perspectives more than the Israel's voice, while CNN foregrounded the Israel's voice more than the Palestinian's voice ; and intensification was mainly realized through hyperbole and metaphor, whereas mitigation was predominantly achieved through the use of modal verbs.