A CDA Approach to the Biased Interpretation and Representation of Ideologically Conflicting Ideas in Western Printed Media

Abstract

As one of the most important sites in which and through which national agenda is articulated and disseminated, national newspapers play particularly important roles in representing and interpreting news stories (Li, 2009, p. 85).Drawing on Van Dijk's (1998) socio-cognitive approach and Fairclough's (1995) approach of intertextual analysis of news discourse and within the paradigm of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this study examined how three cases of ideologically conflicting ideas are interpreted and represented in western printed media.The conflicting ideas taken into account included Iran Nuclear Program, Iran Sanctions, and Syria Crisis for which the ideological stances of Iranian officials and most of the western countries strongly differ.Meanwhile, the study attempted to clarify how linguistic tools can carry ideological traits in their discoursal properties resulting in misrepresentation of above-mentioned news stories while at the same time legitimating the ideological stances of their favorite sources.Interestingly, the findings revealed that linguistic tools are among the most important devices through which ideological proclivities can be placed in the news stories of newspapers.Besides, such linguistic tools as lexicalization and collocational patterns, presupposition, intertextuality, and modality were identified as the items with the highest frequency of use in the representations of such news stories.

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