A Critical Discourse Analysis of Naming and Predication in Western News Coverage of the Egyptian January 25 and June 30 Protests

Abstract

This study aims at investigating how the use of language by the Western newspapers, namely, The New York Times (American) and The Guardian (British), has reflected differential ideological perspectives on the Egyptian January 25 and June 30 protests, particularly with regard to both Mubarak and Morsi, their governments, and their pro- and anti-regime protesters. Furthermore, the study examines the extent to which such differential ideological perspectives by the two news outlets have been consistently reflective of the official mainstream ideological views, and hence contributing to the notion of media as an ideological state apparatus (ISA). As for its analytical framework, the study has adopted Fairclough's (1995a) three-layer model of critical discourse analysis (CDA) and complemented it with van Dijk's (2000) ideological square in order to investigate the biased classification schemes created by Richardson's (2007) naming and predication which are two common textual features in Press discourse. The data comprises 32 news reports covering both Egyptian protests from the eruption of each to the downfall of both regimes (more specifically, from Jan. 25 to Feb. 11, 2011; and from Nov. 22, 2012 to July 3, 2013), focusing on five key events during each protest. The results have revealed that each newspaper's stance towards both protests has been ideologically-slanted and tremendously fed by its ownership/political affiliation, hence giving support to the notion of the media as an ISA

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