Lexico-schematic Analysis of the Representation of Political Protests in Egypt in The New York Times and Ahramonline

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Language and Translation Department, College of Language and Communication, Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport

2 Languages Department, College of Language and Communication, Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport, Cairo

Abstract

This study aims at conducting a contrastive qualitative and quantitative analysis of the representation of the protests that took place in Egypt after late President Mohamed Morsi's November 2012 Constitutional Declaration, as reported by the U.S. The New York Times and Egyptian Ahramonline electronic newspapers. The significance of this research resides in the fact that, despite the elapse of about a decade on such watershed event, it has hitherto paid no linguistic attention. Discussion will draw on Critical Discourse Analysis, particularly Fairclough's (1995a) Discourse Analysis Model, and van Dijk's (1988) notion of News Schemata. We explore the similarities/differences in the representation of the event in the electronic newspapers both lexically and schematically with the aim of describing the function of language as a powerful socio-political practice in media discourse. The textual and discursive structure of 48 news reports were compared and related to the political and social context of the events to exhibit the newspapers' ideological strategies through various linguistic choices. The findings of the study exhibited more similarities than differences between the two newspapers. Up to 11 ideological strategies were detected in the analysis.

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

Alhumaidi, M. (2013). A critical discourse analysis of Al-Ahram and Aljazeera's online coverage of Egypt's 2011 revolution [Doctoral dissertation]. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. (UMI No. 3584272)
Almustafa, A. (2016). Critical discourse analysis of news reports of the Libyan revolution in Arabic versus foreign coverage [Unpublished Doctoral dissertation, Helwan University, Egypt]
Bassiouney, R. (2012). Politicizing identity: Code choice and stance-taking during the Egyptian revolution. Discourse & Society, 23(2), pp. 107–26.
Bhatia, A. (2006). Critical Discourse Analysis of political press conferences.  Discourse & Society 17, no. 2, pp. 173-203
Bichang'a, W. & George, A. (2012). Kenyan media discourse: A critical discourse analysis of news headlines on 2007 election campaigns. Journal of Education and Social Sciences, 1(2), pp. 42-55.
Blommaert, J. & Bulcaen, C. (2000). Critical discourse analysis. Annual Review of Anthropology, 29, 447-466.
Cabaniss, E. R. (2006). All the news that's fit to print: the social construction of the American immigrant by The New York Times, 1892-1924 [Master's thesis]. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. (UMI No. 1436038)
Chilton, P. (2004). Analysing Political Discourse. Theory and Practice.  Routledge.
Chouliaraki, L. (2008). The Media as moral Education: Mediation and action." Media, Culture & Society 30, no. 6, pp. 831-852.
Cotter, C. (2001). Discourse and media. In D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen & H. E. Hamilton. (Eds.). The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Blackwell Publishers, pp. 416-436.
Davies, B. and Harré, R. (1990). Positioning: The discursive production of selves, Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, 20(1), pp. 43–63.
Eggins, S. (2004). An introduction to Systemic Functional Linguistics. 2nd edition. London & New York: Continuum international publishing group.
Fairclough, N. (1989). Language and Power. Longman.
Fairclough, N. (1995a). Media Discourse. Edward Arnold.
Fairclough, N. L. (1995b). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. Harlow, UK: Person.
Fairclough, N. & Wodak, R. (1997). Critical discourse analysis. In T.A. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as Social Interaction (pp. 258-284). Sage.
Farmanfarmaian, R. (2014). Policing the Arab Spring: Discordant discourses of protest and intervention. In Riot, Unrest and Protest on the Global Stage (pp. 277-300).
Fowler, R., & Kress, G. (1979). Critical linguistics. In R. Fowler, B. Hodge, G. Kress, & T. Trew (Eds.), Language and control (pp. 185-213). Routledge.
Fowler, R. (1991). Language in the news: Discourse and ideology in the press. Routledge.
Fowler, R. (1996). On critical linguistics. In C.R. Coulthard & M. Coulthard (Eds.), Texts and practices: Readings in critical discourse analysis (pp. 3-14). Routledge.
Ghobrial, B. G., & Wilkins, K. G. (2015). The politics of political communication: Competing news discourses of the 2011 Egyptian protests. International Communication Gazette, 77(2), 129-150.
Hall, H. T. (2008). Brand Jane-Finch: A Critical Discourse Analysis of print media discourse on a Toronto low income community [Master's thesis]. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. (ISBN No. 978-0-494-45939-3)
Hall, S. (1996). The problem of ideology: Marxism without guarantees. In D. Morely & K. Chen (Eds.), Stuart Hall: Critical dialogues in cultural studies (pp. 25-46). Routledge.
Hall, S. B. (2012). The discourse of protest: Using discourse analysis to identify speech acts in UK broadsheet newspapers. Media@ LSE, pp.1-55.
Harcup, T. & Cole, P. (2010). Newspaper journalism. Sage Publications.
Hasan, M. (2016). A critical discourse analysis of translated news media texts: The case of Euronews channel [unpublished Doctorate dissertation, Cairo University, Egypt].
Islamist (n.d.). In Oxford English Online Dictionary. https://www.lexico.com/definition/islamist
Kim, K. (2014). Examining US news media discourses about North Korea: A corpus-based critical discourse analysis. Discourse & Society, 25, 221-244. https://doi: 10.1177/0957926513516043
Kress, G. & Hodge, R. (1979). Language as Ideology. Routlege
Kumar, A. (2001). Rewriting the Language of Politics: Kisans in Colonial Bihar. Monohar
Lean, M. L. (2008). New kids on the block: The discursive construction of two new premiers by the mass media. Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines Journal, 2(1), 59-75.
Linke, U. (2008).  The language of resistance: Rhetorical tactics and symbols of protest in Germany’, City and Society, 2(2), pp. 127–33.
Mayr, A. (2008). Introduction: Power, discourse and institutions. In A. Mayer (Ed.), Language and power: An introduction to institutional discourse (pp. 1-25). Continuum.
Moftah, A. (2013). A Critical Discourse Analysis of news reporting of the attack on the Syrian national security hq in the Egyptian Gazette and Tehran Times. Faculty of Arts Magazine, Helwan University, (34), pp.29-56.
Molek-Kozakowska, K. (2012). Multiple Ideologies in the Media Construction of Women in Politics: A Case Study of Gender Parity Debate in Poland. Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines, 5(2). 72-87.
Moon, R. (2021). When Journalists See Themselves as Villains: The Power of Negative Discourse. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 1077699020985465.
Nimmo, D. (1990). New directions in political communication: A resource book, SAGE Publications, Incorporated, 1990, p. 116.
Oktar, L. (2001). The ideological organization of representational processes in the presentation of us and them. Discourse & Society, 12(3), 313-346.
Pan, Z., & Kosicki, G. M. (1993). Framing analysis: An approach to news discourse. Political communication, 10(1), 55-75.
Pasha, T. (2011). Islamists in the headlines: Critical discourse analysis of the representation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egyptian newspapers [Doctorate dissertation, The University of Utah]. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. (UMI No. 3262629)
Paulin, L. M. (2007). Newspaper discourses of Latino labor and Latino rights in the new United States South [Doctorate dissertation]. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. (UMI No. 3262629)
Retzlaff, S., & Gänzle, S. (2008). Constructing the European Union in Canadian news. Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines, 2(2), 67-89.
Richardson, J.E. (2007). Analyzing Newspapers: An approach from Critical Discourse Analysis. Palgrave Macmillan.
Riggins, S. H. (1990). Beyond Goffman: Studies on Communication, Institution, and Social Interaction. Mouton de Gruyter.
Said, S. B., & Kasanga, L. A. (2016). The discourse of protest: Frames of identity, intertextuality and interdiscursivity. Negotiating and contesting identities in linguistic landscapes, 71-83.
Schroder, K. C. (1994). Media language and communication. The encyclopedia of language and linguistics (Vol. 5, pp. 2412-20). Pergamum Press.
Secular (n.d.). In Oxford English Online Dictionary https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/secular
Sheyholislami, J. (2001). Yesterday's "separatists" are today's "resistance fighters": A critical discourse analysis of the representation of Iraqi Kurds in The New York Times and the Globe and Mail (Master's thesis). ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database.
Shmargad, Y., & Klar, S. (2020). Sorting the news: How ranking by popularity polarizes our politics. Political Communication, 37(3), 423-446.
Sian, K., Law, I., & Sayyid, S. (2012). The Media and Muslims in the UK. Consultado a, 15, 2013.
Sonntag, S. K. (2003). Th e Local Politics of Global English. Case Studies in Linguistic Globalization. Lexington Books.
Teo, P. (2000). Racism in the news: A critical discourse analysis of news reporting in two Australian newspapers. Discourse & Society, 11(1), 7-49. https://doi:10.1177/0957926500011001002
Tranchese, A., & Zollo, S. A. (2013). The construction of gender-based violence in the British printed and broadcast media. Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines, 7(1) 141-163.
Ukeje, C. (2004).  From Aba to Ugborodo: Gender identity and alternative discourse of social protest among women in the oil delta of Nigeria, Oxford Development Studies, 32(4), pp. 605–17.
van Dijk, T. A. (1983). Discourse analysis: Its development and application to the structure of news. Journal of communication, 33(2), 20-43.
van Dijk, T. A. (1988). News as Discourse. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc.
van Dijk, T. A. (1991). Media contents: The interdisciplinary study of new as discourse. In K. B. Jenson & N. W. Jankowski (Eds.), A handbook of qualitative methodologies of mass communication research (pp. 108-120). Routledge.
van Dijk, T. A. (1993). Principles of critical discourse analysis. Discourse & Society 4(2): 249–283.
van Dijk, T. A. (1995a). Discourse, semantics and ideology. Discourse & Society. 6 (2), 243-89.
van Dijk, T. (1998). Opinions and ideologies in the press. In Approaches to media discourse, edited by A. Bell and P. Garrett (Eds.), Approaches to media discourse. Blackwell, pp. 21–63.
van Dijk, T. A. (2001) Critical Discourse Analysis. In Schiffrin, D., Tannen, D., & Hamilton, H. E. (Eds.), The handbook of discourse analysis. Blackwell Publishers.
van Dijk,T. A. (2006). Politics, ideology and discourse. Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics (2nd ed., pp. 728–740). https://doi: 10.1016/b0-08-044854-2/00722-7
van Dijk, T. A. (2008). Discourse and power. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Wodak, R. (Ed.) (1989). Language, Power and Ideology: Studies in Political Discourse. John Benjamins.
Wodak, R. (2006). Critical linguistics and critical discourse analysis. In J-O. Östmann, J. Verschueren, & E. Versluys (Eds.), Handbook of Pragmatics. John Benjamins.
Wood, A. G. (2000).  Urban protest and the discourse of popular nationalism in postrevolutionary Mexico: The case of the Veracruz rent strike, National Identities, 2(3), pp. 265–76.
Woolfson, C. (2006). Discourses of labor protest, Atlantic Journal of Communication,14(1/2), pp. 70–96.
Youssef, A. (2012). A critical analysis on media coverage of the Egyptian revolution: The case of Al-Ahram, Al-Masry Al-Youm, The Telegraph and The Washington Post (Master's thesis, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden). https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:540808/fulltext01.pdf
Yusha'u, M. J. (2012). Representation of Boko Haram discourses in the British broadsheets. Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research, 5(1), 91-108.
 

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics