Attitudes to Afrocentrism: A Contrastive Appraisal Analysis of Opinion Pieces on the Netflix Docudrama

This research unravels the implied ideologies in the evaluative discourse used to comment on the public reception of Netflix docudrama “Cleopatra” and distribution patterns of this evaluative discourse in three Egyptian and three non-Egyptian online opinion pieces. The problem that motivated this study is twofold: the Egyptian audience’s angry reactions to the docudrama as well as lack of academic knowledge of Afrocentrism and its relatedness to Egypt. Therefore, the study employs the Appraisal Theory as its framework of analysis. Analysis of annotated discourse with the use of Monococ.Pro software indicated a stronger tendency in the non-Egyptian pieces towards evaluative discourse than is found in their Egyptian counterparts with Judgment and Appreciation as the two systems of attitude mostly favored across the sample. Highly opinionated language is expressed as judgement of producers’ decisions and appreciation of the quality of the docudrama rather than as an expression of emotions. It was indicated that the non-Egyptian sources embrace multiculturalism and the concept of the Afrocentric origins of ancient Egyptian civilization and acknowledge the need to reconsider the motives behind the Egyptian audience’s irate reactions to the docudrama. The Egyptian sources express an unwavering belief in the Egyptians’ ownership of their history, and adamantly dismiss the concept of Afrocentric Egyptian civilization. The study recommends conducting future research on a larger sample of texts from different genres to understand public attitudes towards the propagation of Afrocentrism from different cultural perspectives.

Keywords: Online opinion pieces – Appraisal Theory – Afrocentrism – Ideology – Netflix “Cleopatra” docudrama