CDA of News Discourse

Liquidated, assassinated or murdered?

A critical discourse analysis of selected responses to assassination

(Hafez, 2006)

Historical Background
On 22 March, 2004, Sheikh Yassin, the
spiritual leader & founder of the Palestinian
Resistance group Hamas & a blind,
wheelchair bound, 67 year old quadriplegic,
was shot with multiple-launched missiles.
Immediately after the raid, Israeli PM Ariel
Sharon congratulated the Israeli Defense
Force on their success.

Introduction
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA): (Fowler & Kress, 1979)
Language encodes power difference.
Language is instrumental in enforcing power differences.
Therefore, CDA analyses language as a system of representation which manipulates
the public's attitude by re-defining reality to the advantage of the powerful.
Role of CDA in News Discourse:
Comparing different responses to the same event to identify ideological intervention
through systematic use of certain linguistic choices.

Van Dinks (1997; 1998) Classification of +ve

Self-presentation & -ve Other-presentation
It is based on the polarization of the Self and the Other

- Us & Them
- in-group & out-group
This resulted in 4 micro-strategies:
1) Mitigate Our ve actions/qualities
2) Reinforce Our +ve actions/qualities
3) Mitigate Their +ve actions/qualities
4) Reinforce Their ve actions/qualities

Other Supplementary Micro-Strategies

Hallidays (1985) Functional Model
I] Ideational/Context Function
Agency, i.e., the actors explicit involvement in the action.
It can be de-emphasised or mystified through:
-use of passive voice, shifting focus to participant
-use of nominalisation, where actor, tense & manner are all deleted & the process is
expressed as a state, mystifying responsibility
Example: The European Union mitigates Israel's assassination of Yassin:
The assassination which has just been carried out has inflamed the situation
-use of nominalisation assassination leaving out & therefore mystifying the victim(s),
the perpetrators, the manner (blew to pieces), & circumstance (in an air raid)
-use of passive voice has been carried out leaves the perpetrators unspecified

Other Supplementary Micro-Strategies

Hallidays Functional Model
II] Interpersonal Function:
It focuses on modality, i.e., affect, including approving and disapproving lexical items
of praise or condemnation & blame
Example: Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss of Neturei Kara says:
The Jewish people throughout the world have been thrown into turmoil and are
deeply incensed at the recent colossal happening, the tragedy that has taken place.
-emotive vocabulary condemning act against Yassin: tragedy & murder, &
characterising Jews reaction as one of turmoil
-negative evaluative adjective of importance colossal to emphasise enormity of event
-qualified adjective deeply incensed to describe Orthodox Jews anger at murder of
Yassin.

Other Supplementary Micro-Strategies

Hallidays Functional Model
III] Textual/Rhetorical Function:
It focuses on how the text is organised, may be supplemented by such
notions as intertextuality & parallelism
Example of parallel structures:
Israel is

entitled to

do this

under international law.

Israel is not however entitled to carry out extra-judicial killings.

The contrast between the two structures and the negation of the second
structure counter Israels justification & imply condemnation

Other Supplementary Micro-Strategies

Use of labels: redefines the situation, & represents & categorises people
from a point of view confronting, or challenging, existent stereotypes.
Polarisation of labels divides the world into 2 extremes: good vs evil, Us vs
Them.
Strategy of victim-victimizer reversal (Wodak, 1997) shows victims as
responsible for every attack on them, thus, displacing guilt & responsibility
on Others.
-ve actions of colonised: exaggerated & criminalised
-ve actions of coloniser: de-emphasised by denials
Example: Sharon labels the victim of the assassination, Yassin, as the leader
of the Palestinian assassins and terrorists

Other Supplementary Micro-Strategies

Euphemism: mitigating ve actions through
-use of words
Example: Sharon refers to the action taken against Yassin by the euphemistic
verb hit as opposed to murdered or killed
-distancing devices
Example: Sharon uses a demonstrative pronoun in this man to avoid naming
Yassin
Dysphemism: use of lexical items reinforcing ve actions
Example: justifying Yassins killing is reinforced through use of
overlexicalisation, Sharon uses lexis of criminality: assassins and terrorists,
assassination and murder

During a prayer service at Emanuel

African Methodist Episcopal
Church, on June 17, 2015, Dylann
Roof, a white American, killed 9
African Americans in hopes of
igniting a race war, as he confessed.

On December 2, 2015, Syed Rizwan

Farook & Tashfeen Malik, a Muslim
married couple, shot & killed 14
people at the Inland Regional Center
in San Bernardino, California, US.

-Agency mystified through use of

nominalisation attack, where actor,
manner & circumstance are deleted
mitigating Our ve actions
-Euphemism: attack mitigating Our
ve actions through the use of a word
which does not indicate how they were
killed. It might have been a fire attack
or a wild animal attack
Strapline
-No labelling for suspect mitigating
Our ve qualities
-Agency mystified through use of
nominalisation shooting, where
actor, tense & circumstance are deleted

-Agency emphasised through use of

active voice & no nominalisation:
couple slaughters 14, where actor
& tense are stated reinforcing Their
ve actions
- Dysphemism: Terror,
slaughters, killers reinforcing
Their ve actions through the use
of lexis of criminality
-Use of label Muslim conforming
to stereotypes

References
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Language and control, pp.185-213. London: Routledge and Keegan Paul.
Hafez, O. (2006). Liquidated, assassinated or murdered?: A critical discourse analysis of selected
responses to assassination. In S. A. Kamal, H. S. Gindi, & M. M. Hashem (Eds.), Proceedings of the 8th
International Symposium on Comparative Literature: Vol. 8. Power and the Role of the Intellectual
(pp.169-200). Giza, Egypt: Department of English Language and Literature, Cairo University.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1985). An introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold.
van Dijk, T. A. (1997). Political discourse and racism: Describing Others in Western Parliaments. In S.
H. Riggins (Ed.), The language of politics and exclusion: Others in discourse, pp.31-64. Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage Publications.
van Dijk, T. A. (1998). Opinions and ideologies in the press. In A. Bell & P. Garrett (Eds.), Approaches
to media discourse, pp.21-63. Oxford: Blackwell.
Wodak, R. (1997). Das Ausland and anti-Semitic discourse: The discursive construction of the Other. In
S. H. Riggins (Ed.), The language of politics and exclusion: Others in discourse, pp.65-87. Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Thank you